But that afternoon, maybe because this had been the place they so often came in their happiest times, Eleanor wanted to sit there by the stone arch bridge for a moment with her children. Just sit there together, taking it all in. Maybe, she thought, on this day of terrible sadness, they’d find solace in this place they’d known so many happier times.
Somewhere deep down under the ice, trout slept, who would awake in springtime. That’s what the seasons taught you. After every winter came spring. Even after great sorrow, a new day.
For Eleanor—and possibly the children, too—the waterfall was the closest thing she knew to church.
In the rearview mirror, she studied the faces of her children in the back seat. Whatever it was that Toby took in of the world that afternoon, and what he made of it, Eleanor had no clue.
Al’s eyes were locked on a game of Donkey Kong. Ursula stared at her well-worn commemorative edition ofPeoplemagazine, allthose pictures of Christa as a little girl playing her piano, Christa and her children at Disney World, Christa at astronaut training school. Christa in her blue jumpsuit, waving to a crowd as she set out across the tarmac toward the space shuttle.
The memory came to Eleanor of how, when she was Ursula’s age, she’d studied pictures inLifemagazine of JFK and Jackie, in the moments before the assassination. As if they might contain some clue to the awful event about to take place.
Eleanor had imagined they’d have the place to themselves on a day like this. But a truck was pulled over at their spot—a familiar one. They were a hundred feet from the waterfall, but it wasn’t hard to recognize the bright green 1972 Dodge that belonged to her husband.
On any other day, the unexpected sight of their father’s truck pulled over along the side of the road would have prompted the suggestion from Ursula, “Let’s go surprise him.”
Not this time. Eleanor was the one—the only one—who had spotted Cam’s old truck, but even from that distance, she took it all in. Not just the truck, but the rest.
Braking as hard and sharply as she did then was not a recommended move on icy roads. She could feel the wheels of her car seeking traction.
Another few seconds and Eleanor had managed to turn the car around. Icy as it was on this patch of road, she accomplished a screeching U-turn. Hearing the sound of the tires on the gravel road, the girls looked up and turned their faces to the window.
“What are you doing, Mom?” Al asked from the back. She looked up briefly, just long enough to see her father’s truck. Ursula had taken her eyes from her magazine now to look out the window.
“What’s Dad doing here?” Ursula said. “Maybe they canceled his workshop thing on account of theChallenger.”
Then Al again: “Why are we turning around?”
“I decided to go home the other way after all,” Eleanor told them. “Maybe your dad needs to be alone.”
Only he wasn’t alone. Her children, with their heads bowed, hadn’t seen it, but Eleanor had. There was another person on the bench seat next to her husband.
It was Coco. Easy to tell, from the back even, on account of that red beanie of hers and a scarf knit by Alison, a gift from the Christmas just past.
They had their arms around each other. They were kissing.
“When we get home, I’m making us popcorn and hot chocolate,” Eleanor said. She would have liked to gun the engine, but the road was so icy, and she carried the memory still of a spin on this very spot, a winter far from this one, a baby in her belly and her husband back at their farm, stoking the fire, a time when it seemed their whole lives stretched before them, and the idea of a moment like this one would have been unfathomable.
They rode in silence then. Normally, Eleanor would have put on a tape, and they might even have sung along with it, but not today.
Passing Walt and Edith’s house, she saw Walt outside, shoveling snow, and something possessed her to stop.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she told the children. She stepped out of the car, left the motor running.
“You look like you saw a ghost?” Walt said as she approached him. “ThatChallengerbusiness got you upset, I reckon.”
“My marriage is over,” she told him.
“Oh, honey,” he said. The same words she’d spoken to Ursula. He held out his arms to her, and for a short time—no more than thirty seconds, probably, on account of the children in the car, the motor running—she just stood there with her face pressed against his shoulder.
“I just had to tell someone,” she said.
She drove very slowly the rest of the way home. Maybe it seemed that as long as they were still in the car, as long as they hadn’t got to the house yet, she could stop time.
Cam didn’t show up for dinner. Eleanor made a meal for the family, but nobody wanted to eat. For all the days leading up to the launch, Ursula had insisted on keeping the television on the news, but that night nobody turned it on. The girls went up to their room. Toby put on his Thomas the Tank Engine bathrobe, retrieved his meercat from her bed, and sat on the rug. Eleanor stoked the woodstove.
It was seven thirty when Cam walked in the door, bringing a gust of cold air with him. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Guy on the road needed help changing a tire.” Standing over the table, with his parka still on, he reached for a chicken leg off the platter and bit into it.
He must have been the one person in the United States of America who didn’t know what had happened that day. He had come through the door, shaking snow off his boots, calling out to Ursula to tell him all about it. Meaning Florida. Christa. TheChallenger.
