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“It was only five years ago.”
Sarah sighed. “I was in love with my neighbor.”
Charlie racked his mind, trying to remember Sarah’s old neighbor. “The old guy upstairs?”
“Mr. Chancer was eighty-five years old,” Sarah said. “It wasn’t him.”
“So, who?”
“Do you have to know everything?” Sarah asked, pretending to be disgruntled.
Charlie smiled wider and reached across the car to squeeze her hand. “I was so broken up inside when you said no. I nearly gave up on you.”
“You did not,” Sarah shot back. “You basically stalked me until I agreed to get that coffee with you.”
Charlie laughed. He remembered it now: how he’d gone to the bars she’d frequented, eaten at the restaurant she’d worked at, and gotten to know a few of her friends better. It had all been in pursuit of this life they’d built.
“In hindsight, I should have called the police,” Sarah joked.
“You still can,” Charlie said.
Sarah eyed him from the passenger seat, where she had the Atlas sprawled across her lap. Charlie felt an inexplicable surge of love for her. How had he gotten so lucky?
“I’ll hold off for a while,” Sarah said. “At least until we make it to the Atlantic Ocean.”
“You’re using me for my car,” Charlie said. “I knew it.”
At Niagara Falls, Charlie and Sarah wore enormous ponchos, wrapped their arms around one another, and watched the water surge below. The air was nothing but a cloud, so misty that they could hardly see the other people on the platform. At the nearby restaurant, the waitress said, “We don’t get that many guests during December, but I think it looks that much more magical in the winter.” Charlie and Sarah agreed. They ordered club sandwiches and chips and told each other stories from their childhood, even a few they’d never shared before. Charlie had the sensation that he would always be learning new things about Sarah, even fifty years from now.
They kept driving east. Sarah wanted to go to New York City for a night to see the way Manhattan was decorated for Christmas and to buy her mother a bottle of perfume.
But fifty miles outside of New York City, Sarah turned green. She clapped her hand over her mouth and then cried out, “Pull over! Charlie, please!”
Charlie yanked the car to the side of the highway, where Sarah pressed open the passenger door and heaved. The air was cold, and Charlie’s hands were already chapped with chill. He touched her back, terrified.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asked.
Sarah heaved another few times, then turned to look up at him. “Can we stop driving for the day?”
Charlie pulled off at the next exit, which read WHITE PLAINS: 8 miles.
“White Plains,” Sarah sang. “It sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? Like something from a fairy tale.”
“I don’t know about that,” Charlie said with a laugh. Maybe Sarah was delusional. What had she eaten for lunch? Had it been slightly moldy, had it gone bad? He’d read that some types of food poisoning affected your perception of the world.
Charlie pulled into a motel on the outskirts of White Plains and got them a room. Sarah cozied up under the blankets of the bed and turned on the television.
“I guess I’ll order pizza?” Charlie said, frowning down at his wife. She still looked very pale.
“Extra black olives,” Sarah said. “And extra onions.”
Charlie laughed. “Sounds great.” If her appetite was intact, she couldn’t be too sick.
The pizza arrived twenty-five minutes later. Charlie put the pizza on the bed between them, and they watched television for a little while. Sarah ate her pizza quickly, as though she were suddenly ravenous, and Charlie eyed her every few seconds, realizing that she hadn’t said a word to him since the pizza had arrived. It was rare that he and Sarah ever shut up around each other.
Charlie wiped his hands on a napkin. He suddenly felt panicked. What if Sarah had suddenly realized something about him? What if she’d realized she was unhappy in their marriage? They knew plenty of people who’d gotten divorced in their twenties. They called it the “first wave of divorce” in a way that suggested they, themselves, would never breakup. But people never thought they were going to break up until they did. He suddenly felt terribly sick.
“Sarah,” Charlie blurted. “Will you just tell me what I did wrong? I want to fix it. I’ll do anything.”
