Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

When the Old Man had first crumbled, she had scoffed at the sentimental outpouring she had witnessed. The memorial service, the obituaries. The hundreds of e-mails of condolence that in the days after his demise people sent to the Web site for the state’s Division of Parks and Recreation. At the time, it had struck her as more than a little ridiculous.

It seemed less absurd to her now, and she guessed this had something to do with the way her own family was ailing. Aging. Separating. She understood that some pieces of earth transcended mere rock and vista and were capable of summoning a particular place in time. A precise memory, an echo of a season in one’s life. She knew that the view that awaited her at the end of this walk would conjure for her a picnic from thirty years ago, when she and Richard and their two young children had eaten egg-salad sandwiches on boulders on the summit. She would recall the August afternoon when from this peak they had seen a mother black bear and her cub saunter contentedly across a ski trail on Cannon. She would see clearly those bears in her mind, watch them amble once more across the lush green trace in the side of the mountain opposite them.

Apparently, all that remained of the Old Man was a part of his right ear. If she had brought binoculars, she might have been able to see it. Then again, maybe not. Besides, a bit of ear is not very interesting.

She was glad that her granddaughters had seen the Old Man over the years, but it grieved her that Patrick had been born too late. She didn’t, she decided, mourn the Old Man so much as she mourned the memories he evoked.

She stepped gingerly over a sprain-causing crevice in a stone and wiped the sweat away from her brow with the sleeve of her sweater. Then she stopped and took her sweater off and tied it girlishly around her neck. She was seventy years old, and she was alone. She was tired. Very, very tired. She had raised her children and most of the time she thought she had raised them well. She was proud that one was a public defender and one was a teacher. Oh, there were certainly moments when they disappointed her or when she questioned their abilities as parents: She recalled her feelings that awful last night in July. Usually, however, she looked upon them with quiet satisfaction.

But she was nonetheless left wondering: Was this all there was to her life?

She considered whether she would live to see John and Spencer-the McCulloughs and the Setons, her children-reconcile. She doubted it. She seriously doubted it.

She stood absolutely still in the path, because she was experiencing an emotion so alien to her that it took her a long moment to understand what it was. When she figured it out, she only half-believed it: dread. Nan Seton knew from many things, but dread had never been among them. It was almost incapacitating. She had the unmistakable feeling that she was dying and a fear that it was not going to be pretty.

She couldn’t possibly stand still, not for a moment more. She considered turning around and returning to the car, but nearly seven decades’ worth of persistence and intractability made that impossible, too. And so she did the only thing she could, the only thing she had ever done with her life. She continued forward. She remained on task.

But the anxiety was with her the rest of the day.

PAIGE WATCHED CHARLOTTE slather blueberry preserves on her scone and then she noticed Catherine glance at her sideways, and so she smiled. She knew Catherine despised her, but she really didn’t care. Spencer liked her and Keenan liked her, and that was all that mattered right now. Hell, it really didn’t matter if even they liked her. Besides, it was natural for Catherine to feel conflicted: Though her brother wasn’t a defendant, he might wind up looking pretty foolish.

The three of them were sitting in an elegant little restaurant with great waterfalls of ferns and white linen napkins not far from Brearley that was open for breakfast, because she wanted to discuss with Charlotte-with Charlotte and Catherine, actually-the reality that after the press conference, there might be eager beaver reporters who would want to get the girl in their sights. And she wanted to prevent that. She guessed that Catherine would be her ally on this one, and she was glad: She needed the woman to take on the role of mother lioness. If she were a reporter and the child’s parents consistently refused an interview-which Spencer and Catherine had been instructed to do-she might consider making an end-around and try meeting the girl at school for a comment or two. Fortunately, both mother and daughter were at Brearley, so even that would be difficult if Catherine had her guard up.

Outside it was raining, and the showers had broken the heat wave. It was the tenth, and Paige thought the gray skies and mist might actually make tomorrow’s anniversary easier for New Yorkers to bear: There weren’t the cloudless, cerulean blue skies everyone associated with the attacks or the image of silver planes hurtling unfettered through the air just above the long, polygonal lines of skyscrapers. She could overhear the diners at the other tables discussing the anniversary-playing the game of one-upmanship that colored so many conversations, the contestants each trying to find personal connections to the tragedy that all too often were as tenuous as they were insulting to the people who’d suffered real loss-and she was glad the three of them were focused largely on FERAL’s plans and where this child fit in. She felt almost admirable.

“So, suppose some guy shows up after play practice? I have one of the leads in the show we’re doing. Can you believe it? Eighth grade, and I have one of the two or three best parts. It’s The Secret Garden, and I’m Mary Lennox-the little British girl who is so very contrary.”

Paige smiled, at once appreciating the irony that Charlotte was already typecast as a little bitch and that the kid was going to play a girl saved, in part, by a garden.

“Anyway,” the child continued, “suppose there’s a reporter waiting for me outside the auditorium. What am I supposed to do, give him a judo chop?”

“Go find a grown-up. And don’t say a word.”

The girl took a healthy bite of her scone, chewed it, and then said, “Be rude?”

“As rude as you like.”

“No, sweetheart,” her mother said. “You don’t need to be rude. Ever. You can simply tell the reporter that you have nothing to say, and ask to be excused.”

“Now, Catherine-”

“Now, Paige. First of all, she doesn’t need to be rude. She can leave graciously. Second, given what my husband does for a living, the last thing he would want would be for his daughter to alienate a reporter.”

She started to reach across the tablecloth to touch Catherine’s arm, but she had a sense the gesture would be unappreciated right now.

“What are you so worried about? What do you think they would ask me?” Charlotte said.

There was a silver pot of coffee between her and Catherine, and so she refilled her cup. “They might ask you about the accident, they might ask you about your father. They might ask you about being a vegetarian.”

“And why don’t you want me to talk about that? It’s not like I have any secrets, you know.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“Then why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

“I want you to save it for the lawyers.”

The child paused with her scone in the air and surveyed it for a moment. Then: “Someday I want restaurants to have butter it’s okay for me to eat. I don’t like my scones with just jam.”

“You can have butter, sweetheart. Butter’s not meat, and-”

“You know Dad doesn’t want me to have dairy.”

“And you know your dad and I don’t completely agree on that. I want to be sure you get enough calcium.”