Five Days in Summer

End Avenue to the Ninety Sixth Street entrance to the Henry Hudson Parkway, heading north.
    In twenty minutes, Will was speeding up the Hutchinson Parkway. He had all the windows open and the cool midnight summer air swooshed through the SUV, shifting its balance. He gripped the wheel to keep steady and reminded himself to breathe. When he felt tingling in both hands, he shook out one hand, then the other, and tried to drive with a looser hold. The mix of adrenaline and exhaustion made him queasy. The main thing was to stay awake. As he passed through the Bronx and into Westchester, the clusters of brick buildings and the glow of a city that never turned off gave way to complete darkness. Headlights brightened as the occasional car passed him then faded around a bend. Only when he could taste the silence beyond the road did he know he had covered some distance.
    He got off at the first rest stop in Connecticut, stood impatiently on line to buy a cup of bitter fast-food coffee, dumped in some tepid half-and-half, and got back in the SUV. He drank the coffee with one hand and steered with the other. After a while he turned on the radio but couldn’t concentrate. He tried to sing but his voice sounded thin and made him lonely. He pressed the accelerator and passed the speed limit. They said that if a person you loved was dead, you’d know it. Feel it. He had known his parents were gone that very first day. But he didn’t feel Emily’s absence.As long as he had known her, he had sensed her with him. She was with him now, in the back of the SUV. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his neck as she leaned forward to speak. He could feel the heat of her body. There was no way this woman could just disappear. When he pictured her, he saw her in her well-worn gi cinched with her black belt, flipping through the air to land on solid feet, then gliding out of harm’s way.
    From the first time she twisted him to the mat at the dojo, when he didn’t even know her name, he was convinced of her resources. He had never forgotten that look on her face the first night they saw each other and touched as aikido partners-of-the-moment: focused and determined, summoning strength that had to come from a place not quite physical. That night, he thought her eyes were black, but it turned out they were hazel. He thought she was tall, but she was only five feet six. He thought she had short blond hair, but unclipped it fell thickly past her shoulders. He thought her skin was paper white, but it was brushed carelessly with freckles. He assumed that under her gi was the body of a fishwife, and he was the fish powerless in her hands, slapped to the butcher block for carving. But in fact she was lithe, a swimmer. He saw it as soon as he hit the mat. Her practice pants were too short and her ankles had the sexiest curve he’d ever seen. Those were the dating years, and he had never met a woman so unafraid to ignore his jokes when they weren’t funny, who understood when he was trying too hard and let it pass. He was no fool. He recognized her immediately. They were married within a year.
    Just below New Haven, he made the transition to 95 North. Normally traffic jammed at New Haven andagain in Rhode Island when you came into Providence, but not tonight. There were no rush-hour crowds, no families with bikes strapped to the backs of their minivans, no motor boats in tow, just trucks and a few strays like him. The air turned cold and he closed his windows, separating himself from the other drivers. Night driving had never unnerved him like rush-hour traffic; his parents had crashed on a highway, first thing on a clear April morning.
    As he approached the Cape, it started to rain, then pour. His wipers could barely fight the torrent that slammed against the windshield. The deluge slowed him down as he crossed the Bourne Bridge. It was another twenty minutes to the first sign for Juniper Pond. The house was half a mile down Gooseberry Way, an unpaved road that ended in their private cul de sac. The modest house, a gentle slope down, and the lake. It was past four in the morning but the moon was bright enough for him to catch glimmers of water through the trees. There was complete silence. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started. The air was unspeakably sweet.
    The house was dark except for a glow from the side where a kitchen window faced the woods. The garage door was rolled up, with only Sarah’s car parked inside. Will