The Leftovers

unreal, if she could only find someone to go with who wouldn’t drive her crazy. She’d visited Miami on her own last year, and it had been a mistake. As much as she liked solitude and strange places, the two of them together did a number on her, releasing a flood of memories and questions that she managed to keep a fairly tight lid on at home.
    *   *   *
    THE PATH was more or less a straight shot, a car’s width of aging blacktop that took you from Point A to Point B without a whole lot of fanfare. In theory, you were free to double back at any point, but Nora either went halfway—turning around at the edge of Mapleton for an easy sixteen-mile round-trip—or all the way to the terminus in Rosedale, for a grand total of thirty-four, a distance that was no longer the least bit daunting to her. If the path had continued for another ten miles, she would have followed it to the end without complaint.
    Not too long ago she would have laughed if someone had suggested that a three-hour bike ride would become an unremarkable part of her daily routine. Back then her life was so crowded with tasks and errands, the everyday emergencies and constantly expanding to-do list of a full-time wife and mother, that she could barely squeeze in a couple of yoga classes a week. But these days she literally had nothing better to do than ride her bike. Sometimes she dreamed about it right before falling asleep, the hypnotic sight of the ground disappearing beneath her front wheel, the jittery sensation of the world humming up through her handlebars.
    One day she’d have to get a job, she understood that, not that there was any particular hurry on that front. With the generous survivor’s benefits she’d received—three lump-sum six-figure payments from the federal government, which had stepped in after the insurance companies had ruled the Sudden Departure an “Act of God” for which they could not be held accountable—she figured she’d be okay for at least five years, even more if she ever decided to sell the house and move into someplace smaller.
    Still, the day would eventually come when she’d have to start supporting herself, and she did her best to think about it sometimes, not that she ever got too far. She could see herself getting up in the morning full of purpose, putting on clothes and makeup, and then heading out the door, but her fantasy always petered out right there. Where was she going? To an office? A school? A store? She had no idea. She had a degree in Sociology and had spent several years with a research firm that rated corporations based on their records of social and environmental responsibility, but the only thing she could really imagine herself doing at this point was working with children. Unfortunately, she’d tried that last year, helping out a couple of afternoons a week at Erin’s old day care, and it hadn’t gone very well. She’d cried too much in front of the kids, and hugged a few of them a little too hard, and had been gently and respectfully asked to take a leave of absence.
    Oh well, she told herself. Maybe it won’t matter. Or maybe none of us will even be around in five years.
    Or maybe she’d meet a nice man, get married, and start a new family—maybe even a family just like the one she’d lost. It was a seductive idea, until she got around to thinking about the replacement children. They would be a disappointment, she was sure of it, because her real children had been perfect, and how could you compete with that?
    She turned off her iPod and checked her jacket pocket to make sure her pepper spray was handy before crossing Route 23 and entering the long, slightly freaky stretch of the trail that ran between an industrial wasteland to the south and a scrubby forest that was under the nominal control of the County Parks Commission to the north. Nothing bad had ever happened to her there, but she’d seen some weird stuff in the past few months—a pack of dogs shadowing her at the edge of the woods, a muscular man whistling cheerfully as he pushed an empty wheelchair down the path, and a stern-looking Catholic priest with a salt-and-pepper beard who reached out and squeezed her arm as she rode by. Then, just last week, she happened upon a man in a business suit sacrificing a sheep in a small clearing near an algae-covered pond. The man—a chubby middle-aged guy with curly hair and round glasses—had a large knife pressed to the animal’s throat, but hadn’t yet begun his