“I’m telling you this,” she continues, “because Harvey Corey and his wife, and Lucy, and William, along with all the others who lost Daniel, and everyone else who comes to that church week after week, with other equally terrible holes in their lives—they expect you to be there. I expect you to be there, to help them keep going. You know all about keeping going. This is not the time to give up, James. Do you understand? This is not the time.”

A patch of sunshine races up the field, strafes us, flies on over the brow of the hill. Penny lollops toward us on long legs.

I’m off to East Anglia,” I tell Ellen in the farmyard. Penny has said goodbye and is speeding off down the hill to Barrow End, standing on the pedals. “I must see my son.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

Now that I’ve said it, I have to go. This can’t wait any longer.

“It’s an awfully long way. Can you drive, with your ribs?” She looks up at me, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I don’t know why I’m even asking. You’ve made up your mind.”

“Yes.” I try to find a reassuring expression, like a man who knows what he’s doing. “Bon voyage, Ellen. Good luck on your great adventure. Please send me a postcard. Send me a lot of postcards.”

“Where to?” Her eyes suddenly blaze. “Corey’s Farm? Or somewhere else?”

Penny calls from a few hundred yards away, wheeling in the road. “Ellen, please come on, I’m starving . . . ” Ellen turns away from me toward her bicycle. “Goodbye, James,” she says, pushing it past the gateway. “Good luck.”

She can’t just leave like this. Yes, she can. She’s going to. I hurry after her.

“Please,” I beg her. “Please give me time . . .”

“You’ve got time, James. You have to decide what to do with it.”

Astride her bike, she leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “That’s for Archdeacon Frobisher,” she whispers.

I shout with aghast laughter. “Am I to pass it on?”

“Goodbye, James!” she calls, and cycles off, fast, after Penny. I watch them until they reach a point where the road gets a lot steeper and they plunge out of sight. Two long, thrilled screams fade into silence. I stand with my hand on my cheek, listening, but there’s nothing else to hear.

—

Now that I’ve decided to make the trip today, I’m overtaken by haste. A thermos of tea, a cobbled-together sandwich. I pencil out the route in my road atlas: the journey will take hours and hours. I pack a bag of necessities, lock all the doors. It’s now eleven in the morning.

Turning left is much worse than turning right. The pain focuses my mind on the driving, to the exclusion of all else.