Roadside Crosses

THAT’S SAD ,” the woman said.
    Her husband, behind the wheel of their Ford SUV, which he’d just paid $70 to fill, glanced at her. He was in a bad mood. Because of the gas prices and because he’d just had a tantalizing view of Pebble Beach golf course, which he couldn’t afford to play even if the wife would let him.
    One thing he definitely didn’t want to hear was something sad.
    Still, he’d been married for twenty years, and so he asked her, “What?” Maybe a little more pointedly than he intended.
    She didn’t notice, or pay attention to, his tone. “There.”
    He looked ahead, but she was just gazing out of the windshield at this stretch of deserted highway, winding through the woods. She wasn’t pointing at anything in particular. That made him even more irritated.
    “Wonder what happened.”
    He was about to snap, “To what?” when he saw what she was talking about.
    And he felt instantly guilty.
    Stuck in the sand ahead of them, about thirty yards away, was one of those memorials at the site of a car accident. It was a cross, kind of a crude thing, sitting atop some flowers. Dark red roses.
    “Is sad,” he echoed, thinking of their children—two teenagers who still scared the hell out of him every time they got behind the wheel. Knowing how he’d feel if anything happened to them in an accident. He regretted his initial snippiness.
    He shook his head, glancing at his wife’s troubled face. They drove past the homemade cross. She whispered. “My God. It just happened.”
    “It did?”
    “Yep. It’s got today’s date on it.”
    He shivered and they drove on toward a nearby beach that somebody had recommended for its walking trails. He mused, “Something odd.”
    “What’s that, dear?”
    “The speed limit’s thirty-five along here. You wouldn’t think somebody’d wipe out so bad that they’d die.”
    His wife shrugged. “Kids, probably. Drinking and driving.”
    The cross sure put everything in perspective. Come on, buddy, you could be sitting back in Portland crunching numbers and wondering what kind of insanity Leo will come up with at the next team rally meeting. Here you are in the most beautiful part of the state of California, with five days of vacation left.
    And you couldn’t come close to par at Pebble Beach in a million years. Quit your moaning, he told himself.
    He put his hand on his wife’s knee and drove ontoward the beach, not even minding that fog had suddenly turned the morning gray.
    DRIVING ALONG 68 , Holman Highway, Kathryn Dance called her children, whom her father, Stuart, was driving to their respective day camps. With the early-morning meeting at the hotel, Dance had arranged for Wes and Maggie—twelve and ten—to spend the night with their grandparents.
    “Hey, Mom!” Maggie said. “Can we go to Rosie’s for dinner tonight?”
    “We’ll have to see. I’ve got a big case.”
    “We made noodles for the spaghetti for dinner last night, Grandma and me. And we used flour and eggs and water. Grandpa said we were making them from scratch. What does ‘from scratch’ mean?”
    “From all the ingredients. You don’t buy them in a box.”
    “Like, I know that. I mean, what does ‘scratch’ mean?”
    “Don’t say ‘like.’ And I don’t know. We’ll look it up.”
    “Okay.”
    “I’ll see you soon, sweetie. Love you. Put your brother on.”
    “Hey, Mom.” Wes launched into a monologue about the tennis match planned for today.
    Wes was, Dance suspected, just starting the downhill coast into adolescence. Sometimes he was her little boy, sometimes a distant teenager. His father had died two years ago, and only now was the boy sliding out from under the weight of that sorrow. Maggie, though younger, was more resilient.
    “Is Michael still going out on his boat this weekend?”
    “I’m sure he is.”
    “That rocks!” O’Neil had invited the boy to go fishing this Saturday, along with Michael’s young son, Tyler. His wife, Anne, rarely went out on the boat and, though Dance did from time to time, seasickness made her a reluctant sailor.
    She then spoke briefly to her father, thanking him for baby-sitting the children, and mentioned that the new case would be taking up a fair amount of time. Stuart Dance was the perfect grandfather—the semiretired marine biologist could make his own hours and truly loved spending time with the children. Nor did he mind playing chauffeur. He did, however, have a meeting today at the Monterey Bay