Point Of Departure. Laurie Breton

picked up his travel mug and kissed his mother on her smooth, scented cheek. “Tell Brenda that unless somebody else dies an untimely and violent death, I’ll be happy to show her niece the town. And I’ll call one of the boys about mowing the lawn. Oh, and don’t hold dinner for me tonight. I might not make it home.”

      Her voice followed him out the door. “Am I supposed to be surprised by that?”

      

      Sam Winslow unlocked the door to his office and flipped the light switch. The overhead fluorescents sputtered to life, casting harsh blue light over a cinder block room just big enough for his desk, a file cabinet, a narrow bookcase and a single straight-backed visitor’s chair painted a hideous mauve. Sam set a steaming cup of McDonald’s coffee on his desk, dropped the exam booklets he’d taken from his mailbox, and pulled the door closed behind him. He prayed that he’d managed the ten-second sprint from the department office to his cubicle without being seen. The story of the unidentified homicide victim and the missing Realtor had been front-page news this morning, and he’d fielded a half-dozen phone calls before breakfast. Reporters looking for an exclusive. Friends who’d heard the news and wanted to offer their support. The last thing he wanted was to socialize, and if he didn’t hide behind closed doors, Nikki Voisine, the newly hired French instructor, was bound to stop by with her own cup of coffee to get the rest of the story right from the horse’s mouth.

      He hadn’t slept worth a damn. Who could, under the circumstances? He kept picturing Kaye’s face the last time he’d seen her, the accusation in her eyes. The disbelief. The fear. And the guilt he’d felt so deep in his stomach that it had been an actual physical ache.

      Ever since the cops had shown up at his door, he’d been a wreck. Just how much did Abrams and Policzki know? Who had they talked to? Even his sister didn’t know the truth, and he wasn’t about to tell her. He couldn’t cope with the disappointment on her face when she found out that her brother had feet of clay. Unless he could find a way of bringing the investigation to a halt, it was only a matter of time before Abrams and Policzki discovered the truth about him. When they did, his life, the life he’d worked so hard to build, would implode with the force of a ton of TNT.

      Sam picked up his coffee with hands that trembled like his father’s had the morning after a drinking binge. He raised the cup to his mouth and took a slug of coffee. He had to stop this. Had to stop the shaking, had to stop the thinking, had to stop the endless going around in circles, the perpetual game of what-if and if-only. If he didn’t, he’d make himself crazy. Normal, he told himself. You have to keep up the pretense of normal.

      Okay, so he could do normal. He would do normal. Sitting down behind the desk, Sam pulled out his red pen, tuned the stereo to a classical station and began grading exams.

      Not his favorite job, but a necessary one. His students came from all walks of life and from a mix of age groups, but the vast majority of them shared one thing in common: they were monumentally unprepared for college. Most of their papers were riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. At some point before they entered his classroom, every one of his students had managed to graduate from high school. Yet invariably, in every class he taught, when he assigned the first three-page research paper, he had to waste valuable class time teaching them how to write one.

      But this morning, he just couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t differentiate between good grammar and bad, couldn’t seem to remember the difference between Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns. He checked his watch for the third time in five minutes, set down his pen and rubbed his bleary eyes. Acting as-if wasn’t working. He could pretend until the cows came home, but normal didn’t exist anymore. Not in his life.

      And he had nobody to blame but himself.

      He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk where, tucked away beneath six years of grade books, he’d hidden a framed photo of Rachel. Kaye wouldn’t have liked it if she’d known he kept his first wife’s photo in his desk. She would have liked it even less if she’d known he took that photo out regularly and had long, rambling conversations with his dead wife.

      It still hurt to look at her. After eight years, it should have stopped hurting. But every time he gazed at her face, his chest ached with a pain no medicine could take away.

      “I’ve really botched things up this time, haven’t I?” he told her. “Christ, Rach, I wish you were here to impart a little of your worldly wisdom. I know just what you’d say. ‘Snap out of it, Winslow. Life’s too short to waste it worrying.’ That’s what you used to tell me. I guess you were right about the short part. At least for you it was short.

      “I’m scared,” he murmured. “I’m not sure what to do, Rach. Maybe I should be wearing a sign that warns women away from me—Don’t Marry Sam; You’ll Never Survive the Marriage.”

      Rachel didn’t answer. She never did. No matter what he told her, she just smiled at him in that loving, nonjudgmental way.

      “Everything’s falling apart,” he said. “My marriage, my life. Payback, I guess, for past sins. I guess you’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”

      Rachel smiled silently back at him. Sam swiveled in his chair, stared out the window at a passing cloud. “I’ve been a terrible husband. I haven’t even made an effort. What does that say about me? A man who lets his marriage disintegrate without even bothering to try to repair it doesn’t have much of himself invested in that marriage, does he?”

      Somebody knocked on his door, and Sam winced. Maybe he should just pretend he wasn’t here. But pretending had gotten him nowhere so far, and he couldn’t hide forever. It was better to brazen it out than to look more guilty than he already did. So he tucked Rachel’s photo back into the drawer, pushed away from the desk and said, “Come in.”

      The door opened and Vince Tedeschi stuck his head in. “Hey, buddy,” he said, his face etched with concern. “Want some company?”

      Not particularly, he thought, but this was Vince, his closest friend. Sam couldn’t turn him away. “Come on in,” he said wearily.

      Vince closed the door behind him, pulled the visitor’s chair from its corner, spun it around and straddled it. “I just heard about Kaye.” He folded his arms across the chair back. “This is unimaginable. Have you had any news?”

      “No.”

      “Man, that’s hard. How’s Gracie taking it?”

      “Gracie’s the same as always. Quiet as the tomb. She and Kaye don’t get along. For all I know, she could be jumping for joy about this. But there’s no way to tell when she keeps it inside. Half the time I think she hates me, too.”

      “She doesn’t hate you. She’s a teenage girl. At that age, nothing you do or say is going to be the right thing. Believe me, I speak from experience. Kari and Katie barely acknowledge me. Unless they want something, and then the Bank of Dad is their favorite place for one-stop shopping.”

      They fell silent, both of them contemplating the mystery that was teenage womanhood. “We can’t even carry on a conversation,” Sam said. “We haven’t been able to for years. It’s as though I’m speaking English and she’s speaking Swahili.”

      “She’ll grow out of it. Until she does, good luck trying to have any kind of normal relationship with her.” Vince got up from the chair and stood there awkwardly. “Do the police have any theories about where Kaye might be?”

      “If they do, they haven’t bothered to share them with me.”

      Vince shuffled his feet a little. “Listen,” he said, “if you need a babysitter, or if Gracie gets lonely, she’s welcome at our house anytime. Day or night.”

      Vince and his third wife had a young daughter. Every summer, the two families spent a couple of weeks together in a rented beach house on the Cape. Gracie thought of five-year-old Deidre as a younger sister, and always loved spending time with her. “Thanks,” Sam said. “I appreciate the offer.”

      With