Page 7 of Broken Country

It’s surreal seeing him like this, a normal person, a father dealing with a bereft son, instead of the alter ego I have become used to seeing in newspapers and magazines. Gabriel Wolfe, enfant terrible of the literary world. In the years since I knew him, Gabriel has become the thing he desired more than anything else, a respected author. His first novel, published when he was just twenty-four, was a bestseller; his dream had come true in the space of six years. A combination of his edgy writing and indisputable good looks kept the press attention rolling in. If publishing had rock stars, then Gabriel was Mick Jagger and his pretty, blond wife was Marianne Faithfull. And our lives, his and mine, became polar opposites. I was now a farmer’s wife, my days filled with bitterly cold mornings, the magic of a lamb being born at sunrise.

I wouldn’t have changed a second of it.

We turn into the gates of Meadowlands. Gabriel’s childhood home is still one of the most beautiful houses I have ever seen. It has the feeling of a chateau on a small scale with that lovely yellowy stone; steps ascending to a huge oak door; arched windows, their frames painted pale blue. I always loved the blue windows. I’m glad they haven’t changed them.

Gabriel gets out of the Land Rover and carries his bundle of dog toward the house, his boy following.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” I call after them.

Gabriel turns, looking perplexed. “I don’t know what to do with the dog.”

“You should bury him.”

I am thinking of Bobby, my sensitive boy, how we buried every bird, every rabbit, a hundred little funerals.

“Where?”

“Not exactly a shortage of space, is there?” I say, and he gives me that sideways glance of old.

How quickly we have slipped into our personas from the past, he the landowner’s son, me the acerbic dissident.

But we are not who we once were. He is a father, and I was a mother, our identities as merged as they once were separated. You can never change back once you’ve had a child, even if that child no longer exists.

Leo says: “I have an idea where. Would you come with us, Beth?”

He asks so politely—considering we have just murdered his dog—and looks straight at me with his wide brown eyes. Bobby’s eyes were brown too; I used to say they were the color of freshly churned mud. He always laughed at that.

“Come on, then. Let’s find a nice spot.”

We cross the perfect green lawn, past a tree house that is new since my day—Gabriel must have installed it for Leo. I think how much my son would have loved it, a boy who was happy enough sliding down a stack of hay bales or riding on a tractor with his dad, who was never spoiled with toys but understood every single day, the way Frank does, the glory of our farm.

“Where are we going?” I ask and Leo replies.

“The lake.”

Gabriel looks over at me and smiles but it’s a regretful sort of smile, as if the ache of memories are the same for him. I cannot allow myself to think of it. When my relationship ended with Gabriel all those years ago, I was devastated for a while, and then I did what every self-respecting woman would do: I shut the door on it, on him. I taught myself to think of Gabriel as someone who belonged to my teenage years, a first crush, little more to me than my brief fixationwith the singer Johnnie Ray. Seeing Gabriel again, like this, in the place where we once meant so much to each other, could shake me to my core if I let it.

Father and son choose a spot beneath one of the willow trees.

“If you fetch some spades, I’ll help you dig,” I say.

While Gabriel is gone Leo and I stand together, looking out at the lake.

Leo is no longer crying, but he stares out at the water morosely. I wonder if he feels awkward being left alone with me, a stranger.

“Do you think you’re going to like living here?”

“I doubt it. I miss my friends. And I don’t like the kids in my class. They’re mean.”

“Who is your teacher? Mrs. Adams? She’s nice, isn’t she?”

“I guess,” he says, sounding American. His accent is in and out, certain words sound American but mostly he’s more English. “How do you know her?”

“My son used to go to your school.”

I’ve had two years to practice but it never gets any easier, waiting for the next question.

“How old is he?”

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