The Road Not Taken Novels & Stories

It waits. The light is softer now, softer and smaller, smaller and distant. My breath is louder than I want it to be, louder than I think it should be, louder than the road. The road is a dark, thin line against the grey and creeping night. It is a thin line against the darkness, against the long and distant and unsteady edge of my plans. The road is as lonely as my thoughts.

“You can take the land, you can take the roads, but you don’t get to take any one of us. Not anymore.” The night doesn’t answer. But it listens. And I know in the marrow of my bones: this wasn’t the door opening. This was it knocking. And next time, it won’t knock so politely.

He said, "Everyone is stuck here. If I were to clear a path just for you, others would call it a misuse of power. Daphne, are you just trying to get me in trouble?" My mother was so anxious that she began sweating profusely. She yelled, "This is a matter of life and death! Is this how you police officers do your job?" Half an hour ago, I returned to the day my father collapsed. Still stuck in traffic, I did not ask my husband, Jonathan Reed, who was conducting the traffic, for help. Instead, I forced my way through the stream of cars and turned sharply into a side road with fewer vehicles. I did not even have the time to step on the gas pedal when Francis appeared, blocking my car.

Donovan had not come begging for it. Perhaps he was too ashamed. Perhaps he did not even know about it, or perhaps my mother-in-law had finally understood something. Either way, my connection to her ended with that money and the prepaid fees. It would be the best ending if both of us could find peace. The evening glow filtered through the balcony glass door, painting the living room in warm golden orange. I stood up, slid open the glass door, and stepped onto the balcony. The evening breeze was gentle, carrying the fresh scent of early summer plants growing.

One day, Caspian said he wanted tiramisu from an old bakery in the northern part of the city. It was something I used to love two years ago. Eventually, I drove out alone. Halfway along a remote coastal road, the car suddenly broke down. I got out to check. I was still trying to figure out the problem when a handkerchief with a sharp smell was pressed over my mouth and nose. Right before I lost consciousness, I thought of how painfully cliché it was.

Because right now it feels like my own wolf put me in time-out. June stays quiet. Not defensive. Just steady. The trees thin enough a little later that I finally catch sight of something unnatural through the branches. A straight line. Too straight to be forest. "Road," I breathe. Aiden follows my gaze. "Maybe." Hope is dangerous out here. We don't celebrate yet. We just keep moving. Because wilderness doesn't care if you survive. The road turns out to be little more than a narrow strip of gravel cutting through endless trees. Not paved.

They proved the saying true: marrying the person you love makes you look like a general who has won a war. In the mirror, I was pale, sunken-eyed, and covered in the air of death. The contrast was indescribable. Adrian asked me: [Which welcome photo do you think is better? You have experience.] I picked one at random. Adrian agreed with my choice. [It looks good. This one, then. My wife chose the same one. You two really are in sync.] The passive-aggressive words were painfully sharp. I muted Adrian's messages and curled up under the blanket to watch the snow.

They were just money’s way of gesturing at nature and saying: I have tamed you. She left the house before nine, which was unusual. She drove herself, which was more unusual still. She drove not toward the city and her office at the Ashford Foundation, not toward the club or the gallery opening she was meant to attend that afternoon, but north, up the river road, without any destination at all. She ran out of gas in a town called Millhaven. The gas station on Route 9 was the kind of place that hadn’t updated its signage since the Carter administration. A hand-painted board advertised WORMS – COLD BEER – PROPANE with equal enthusiasm, as if these were equally essential to the human condition.

It is not Tess agreeing, and it is not anybody's account of where she stood. What I wanted this afternoon was a line running from a bang to a yard, and what I had instead was a shorter road with a piece taken out of the middle of it — the wrong proof removed, and no right one put in its place. I sat with that until it stopped feeling like a loss, which took most of the light.

Straight down without waiting to be ready, which is the worst way, and it put her on her hands and knees in the frost with nothing on and her ribs going like a bellows. Talking before she could breathe. Cart. Road. Tonight. I came back half a minute behind. Shirt over her shoulders. Then the coat. Neither helped. Did it anyway. “Slowly.” “It’s on the road now.” Teeth going. “Four miles. Two horses, one man up, no lamps. It’s the eighth, Ronan, it isn’t the ninth.” “They know about the hedge.” “You don’t run lamps out for freight. You run them out when somebody’s told you there’ll be a book waiting.”