The Wedding

It was Kate, calling about Noah.

“You’d better get down here,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Kate was standing in the corridor when we arrived at Creekside.

“He won’t talk about it,” she said anxiously. “Right now, he’s just staring out at the pond. He even snapped at me when I tried to talk to him, saying that since I didn’t believe in it anyway, I wouldn’t understand. He kept insisting that he wanted to be alone, and he finally shooed me away.”

“But physically, he’s okay?” Jane asked.

“I think so. He refused to eat his lunch—even seemed angry about it—but other than that, he seems fine. But he’s really upset. The last time I peeked in his room, he actually shouted at me to go away.”

I glanced at the closed door. In all our years, I’d never heard Noah raise his voice.

Kate twisted her silk scarf nervously. “He wouldn’t talk to Jeff or David—they just left a few minutes ago. I think they were a little hurt by the way he was acting.”

“And he doesn’t want to talk to me, either?” Jane asked.

“No,” Kate answered. She gave a helpless shrug. “Like I said on the message, I’m not sure that he’ll talk to anyone. The only one I think he might talk to is you.” She looked at me skeptically.

I nodded. Though I worried that Jane would be upset—as she had been when Noah had asked to see me in the hospital—she gave my hand a squeeze of support and looked up at me.

“I guess you’d better see how he’s doing.”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ll wait out here with Kate. See if you can get him to eat something.”

“I will.”

I found Noah’s door, knocked twice, and pushed it partly open.

“Noah? It’s me, Wilson. May I come in?”

In his chair by the window, Noah made no response. I waited a moment before stepping into his room. On the bed, I saw the uneaten tray of food, and after closing the door, I brought my hands together.

“Kate and Jane thought you might want to talk to me.”

I saw his shoulders rise as he drew a long breath, then fall again. With his white hair spilling over the top of his sweater, he looked diminutive in the rocker.

“Are they out there now?”

His voice was so soft that I barely heard it.

“Yes.”

Noah said nothing more. In the silence, I crossed the room and sat on the bed. I could see the lines of strain on his face, though he refused to look at me.

“I’d like to hear what happened,” I said tentatively.

He dropped his chin before his gaze rose again. He stared out the window.

“She’s gone,” he said. “When I went out this morning, she wasn’t there.”

I knew immediately whom he was referring to.

“She might have been in another part of the pond. Maybe she didn’t know you were there,” I suggested.

“She’s gone,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless. “I knew it as soon as I woke up. Don’t ask me how, but I knew. I could sense that she was gone, and when I started toward the pond, the feeling just got stronger and stronger. I didn’t want to believe it, though, and I tried calling for her for an hour. But she never showed.” Wincing, he straightened in the chair, continuing to stare through the window. “Finally, I just gave up.”

Beyond the window, the pond was glistening in the sun. “Do you want to go back and check to see if she’s there now?”

“She isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do,” he said. “The same way I knew she was gone this morning.”

I opened my mouth to respond, then thought better of it. There was no use in arguing the point. Noah had already made up his mind. Besides, something inside me was sure that he was right.

“She’ll come back,” I said, trying to sound convincing.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe not. I can’t tell one way or the other.”

“She’ll miss you too much to stay away.”

“Then why did she leave in the first place?” he demanded. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

He slapped his good hand on the arm of the chair before shaking his head.

“I wish they could understand.”

“Who?”

“My kids. The nurses. Even Dr. Barnwell.”

“You mean about Allie being the swan?”

For the first time, he looked my way. “No. About me being Noah. About me being the same man I’ve always been.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant but knew enough to stay silent while I waited for him to explain.

“You should have seen them today. All of them. So what if I didn’t want to talk to them about it? No one believes me anyway, and I didn’t feel like trying to convince them that I know what I’m talking about. They just would have argued with me about it like they always do. And then, when I didn’t eat my lunch? Well, you would have thought that I’d tried to jump out the window. I’m upset, and I have every right to be upset. When I get upset, I don’t eat. I’ve been that way my whole life, but now, they act like my mental abilities have slipped another notch. Kate was in here trying to spoon-feed me and pretending nothing happened. Can you believe that? And then Jeff and David showed up, and they explained it away by saying that she probably went off to forage, completely ignoring the fact that I feed her twice a day. None of them seems to care what might have happened to her.”

As I struggled to understand what was going on, I suddenly realized that there was more to Noah’s sudden rage than the way his children had reacted.

“What’s really bothering you?” I asked gently. “That they acted as if it were just a swan?” I paused. “That’s what they’ve always believed, and you know that. You’ve never let it get to you before.”

“They don’t care.”

“If anything,” I countered, “they care too much.”

He turned away stubbornly.

“I just don’t understand it,” he said again. “Why would she leave?”

With that, it suddenly dawned on me that he wasn’t angry with his kids. Nor was he simply reacting to the fact that the swan had vanished. No, it was something deeper, something I wasn’t sure he would admit even to himself.