A Bend in the Road - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,108

hiding the injuries from his parents.

“Don’t tell them what happened, Sarah. I’m not ready for that yet. I want to be the one who tells them. I’ll do it when Miles comes by.”

Miles would come to arrest Brian. She was sure of that.

She wondered what was taking so long.

For the past eight hours, she’d veered from anger to worry, from frustration to bitterness and back again, one right after the other. There were too many different emotions for her to begin to sort through.

In her mind, she rehearsed the words she should have responded with when Miles lashed out at her so unfairly. So you think you’re the only one who got hurt here? she would have said. That no one else in the world can understand it? Did you stop to think how hard it was for me to bring Brian by this morning? To turn my own brother in? And your response—oh, that was the kicker, wasn’t it? I betrayed you? I used you?

In frustration, she picked up the remote and turned on the television, scanned the channels. Turned it off.

Take it easy, she told herself, trying to calm down. He’d just found out who’d killed his wife. Nothing harder than that, especially coming out of the blue the way it had. Especially coming from me.

And Brian.

Can’t forget to thank him for ruining everyone’s life.

She shook her head. That wasn’t fair, either. He was just a kid back then. It was an accident. She knew he’d do anything to change what happened back then.

Back and forth it went. She circled the living room again, ending up at the window. Still no sign of him. She went to the phone and picked up the receiver, checking to make sure it had a dial tone. It did. Brian had promised to call her as soon as Miles came over.

So where was Miles, and what was he doing? Calling for reinforcements?

She didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t leave the house, couldn’t use the phone. Not while she was waiting for the call.

Brian spent the rest of the day hiding in his room.

In his bed, he stared at the ceiling, his arms at his sides, legs straight, as though he were lying in a coffin. He knew he’d fallen asleep at times, because the shifting light made things look different in his room. Over the hours, the walls turned from white to faded gray, then to shadows as the sun traveled slowly across the sky and finally went down. He hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner.

Sometime during the afternoon, his mother had knocked at his door and come in; Brian had closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep. He knew she thought he was sick, and he could hear her as she crossed the room. She’d put a hand to his forehead, feeling for a fever. After a minute, she’d crept out, closing the door behind her. In hushed tones, Brian had heard her speaking to his father.

“He must not be feeling well,” she’d said. “He’s really out.”

When he wasn’t sleeping, he thought about Miles. He wondered where Miles was, he wondered when Miles would come. He thought about Jonah, too, and what he would say when his father told him who had killed his mother. He wondered about Sarah and wished she hadn’t been any part of this.

He wondered what prison was like.

In the movies, prisons were worlds of their own, with their own laws, their own kings and pawns, and gangs. He imagined the dim fluorescent lights and the cold permanence of the steel bars, doors clanging shut. In his mind, he heard toilets flushing, people talking and whispering and yelling and moaning; he imagined a place that was never silent, even in the middle of the night. He saw himself staring toward the tops of concrete walls covered with barbed wire and seeing guards in the towers, holding guns pointed toward the sky. He saw other prisoners, watching him with interest, taking bets on how long he would survive. He had no doubt about this: If he ended up there, he would be a pawn.

He would not survive in a place like that.

Later, as the sounds from the house began to settle down, Brian heard his parents go to bed. Light spilled under his door, then finally turned black. He fell asleep again, and later, when he woke suddenly, he saw Miles in the room. Miles was standing in the corner by the closet, holding a gun. Brian blinked, squinted,