ELIZABETH GUTTING

Though it had been years since they’d last spoken, she knew it was Laura. Abby was called back to her early twenties by that pleading inl ection — the voice that could only be Laura’s. She thought now of the mornings in Laura’s kitchen, eating croissant crumbs of each other’s plates, Abby’s textbook pushed aside for a later hour. The rowdy dinners with Laura’s young children — Professor Naughton’s children, too, of course. And that i nal standof , in the doorway to Abby and Professor Naughton’s home, when Laura’s expression had hardened and she had told Abby never to come back. She’d shut the door before Abby could of er a word of explanation, or apology.

“Laura,” she said. “Thank God. Are you all right?”

“So you’re on your way over now, too? I guess I could have warned you this would happen. But something made me wish I was wrong — I wished I was imagining that my dear sweet husband was haunting me from the dead. It started with a cheap mountain bike showing up on my porch every Tuesday morning. Then one day, there he was, balanced on its seat. Anyway, we can talk more in person. I’ll tell you as much as I know, and I’ll leave the

rest to him.”

“I’ll turn back. I can come another time — I’d love to come another time. I think of you oten, I’ve never forgiven myself. I’ll call soon, I promise.”

Abby hung up. Her hands trembled against the wheel. She gripped it harder. Her teeth began to chatter. The car was suddenly cold, like when a storm cloud covers the spring sun. She reached the intersection near her home and let herself take a deep breath. One let turn and she’d be there. On the corner, the windows of In-N-Out Burger glowed with luorescent insistence. Abby watched as a family of four found a table and settled into their seats. How she longed for that sort of easy existence right now — how she longed for a normal day.

When she turned back to the road, she saw the light had changed. But her car was veering into the right lane. She turned the wheel with all her might. It was no use — her car began to drive itself. Now blasts of cold air shot out from the car’s vents, even as she turned the dials for the heat. She banged on the wheel as the car made an easy path down the avenue, weaving in and out of traic at an unhurried pace. How could this be happening? As she approached another red light, she fought against the wheel one more time. Its resistance was impressive, like arm-wrestling with an ogre.

Soon the streets were both familiar and alien to her — the bigleaf maples towered overhead, ten years of new growth shading her car and clouding her memory. The sidewalks were busy with children playing, chasing ater each other on scooters and bicycles. For a moment, she thought she might see Laura and Professor Naughton’s children — but then she remembered they’d be grown by now, and would she even recognize them as gangling teenagers?

And then the car was pulling into the driveway, which looked as it always had. A bed of zinnias still lined the walkway up to Laura’s house. Abby shivered even as the car turned itself of. She opened the driver’s side door — this, inally, a decision she made for herself. She walked to the door she’d last seen slammed in her face. And for some reason — shame? A throwback to her frequent childhood humiliations? — she twisted the sapphire ring from her inger and slipped it into the back zipper pocket of her bike shorts. She rang the doorbell.