Present DayTHERE IS A CURIOUS THING that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character. See, if thelight hits Brian’s face the right way, I can still see the pale blue hue of his eyes that has always made methink of an island ocean I had yet to swim in. Beneath the fine lines of his smile, there is the cleft of his chin—the first feature I looked for in the faces of my newborn children. There is his resolve, his quiet will, and asteady peace with himself that I have always wished would rub off on me. These are the base elements thatmade me fall in love with my husband; if there are times I do not recognize him now, maybe this isn’t adrawback. Change isn’t always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to somepeople like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.

Brian’s eyes dart from Anna, who is picking at a scab on her thumb, to me. He watches me like a mousewatches a hawk. There is something about this that makes me ache; is this really what he thinks of me?

Does everyone?

I wish there was not a courtroom between us. I wish I could walk up to him. Listen, I would say, this is nothow I thought our lives would go; and maybe we cannot find our way out of this alley. But there is no one I’drather be lost with.

Listen, I’d say, maybe I was wrong.

“Mrs. Fitzgerald,” Judge DeSalvo asks, “do you have any questions for the witness?”

It is, I realize, a good term for a spouse. What else does a husband or a wife do, but attest to each other’serrors in judgment?

I get up slowly from my seat. “Hello, Brian,” I say, and my voice is not nearly as steady as I would havehoped.

“Sara,” he answers.

Following that exchange, I have no idea what to say.

A memory washes over me. We had wanted to get away, but couldn’t decide where to go. So we got into thecar and drove, and every half hour we’d let one of the kids pick an exit, or tell us to turn right or left. Wewound up in Seal Cove, Maine, and then stopped, because Jesse’s next direction would have landed us in theAtlantic. We rented a cabin with no heat, no electricity—and our three kids afraid of the dark.

I do not realize I have been speaking out loud until Brian answers. “I know,” he says. “We put so manycandles on that floor I thought for sure we’d burn the place down. It rained for five days.”

“And on the sixth day, when the weather cleared, the green-heads were so bad we couldn’t even stand to beoutside.”

“And then Jesse got poison ivy and his eyes swelled shut…”

“Excuse me,” Campbell Alexander interrupts.

“Sustained,” Judge DeSalvo says. “Where is this going, Counselor?”

We hadn’t been going anywhere, and the place we wound up was awful, and still I wouldn’t have traded thatweek for the world. When you don’t know where you’re headed, you find places no one else would everthink to explore. “When Kate wasn’t sick,” Brian says slowly, carefully, “we’ve had some great times.”

“Don’t you think Anna would miss those, if Kate were gone?”

Campbell is out of his seat, just as I’d expect. “Objection!”

The judge holds up his hand, and nods to Brian for his answer.

“We all will,” he says.

And in that moment, the strangest thing happens. Brian and I, facing each other and poles apart, flip likemagnets sometimes can; and instead of pushing each other away we suddenly seem to be on the same side.

We are young and pulse-to-pulse for the first time; we are old and wondering how we have walked thisenormous distance in so short a period of time. We are watching fireworks on television on a dozen NewYear’s Eves, three sleeping children wedged between us in our bed, pressed so tight that I can feel Brian’spride even though we two are not touching.

Suddenly it does not matter that he has moved out with Anna, that he has questioned some of the decisionsabout Kate. He did what he thought was right, just the same as me, and I can’t fault him for it. Lifesometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always anotherappointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to benotched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes,and completely forgotten to step back and see what we’ve accomplished.

If we lose Kate today, we will have had her for sixteen years, and no one can take that away. And ages fromnow, when it is hard to bring back the picture of her face when she laughed or the feel of her hand insidemine or the perfect pitch of her voice, I will have Brian to say, Don’t you remember? It was like this.

............