LITMIR.BIZ

       DIFFERENT PATHS, SAME WOODS

      For six months, the invitation to her son’s wedding sat in Ruth’s underwear drawer like a love letter, tucked behind a mound of folded pastel cottons and the one lace thong she owned. The sleek gray envelope was addressed only to her. Ruth Fearrington it read in black calligraphy, as if Ronny didn’t even exist. She hadn’t told Ronny about it, and she wouldn’t. If anything was going to convince him to reconcile with their son, it was not Peter’s wedding to another man.

      Now that the day had arrived, she knew she’d made the right choice. Aside from the obvious, she had finished another round of chemo and was coming off four days with her face in the toilet, grateful for the tiniest things—the symmetrical, gleaming tiles under her knees, the soft, cool washcloth Ronny placed on her neck, a thirty-minute reprieve between retching.

      But this morning, she’d held down a cup of hot tea and a piece of unbuttered toast. She was sitting on the rear deck in jeans and a t-shirt and the morning sun was shining on her face and her bald head, slathered with 70 sunscreen. At home, she didn’t bother with the wig unless she and Ronny were entertaining or making love.

      He had finished the laundry and paid the bills, so she had nothing to do today except soak up the sun and go to brunch and a matinee with her best friend, Janet. Their sweet, dopey hound, Buster, was asleep at her feet, too old and arthritic now to join Ronny on his Saturday hunting trips.

      It was the first week of deer season and by now, he would be deep in the woods of southern Orange County. He’d retired from his job as a US History teacher a year earlier and worked part-time time in kitchens and plumbing at the new Home Depot near SouthPointe Mall. The moon had still been shining when he’d gotten up that morning, extracting himself from her arms and dressing in the dark, packing his truck with a cooler, a pair of camo coveralls, and the ridiculous orange vest he wore so he didn’t get his head shot off. But it could be worse, she knew. Janet’s sister’s husband had recently announced that he was in love with his thirty-two year old trainer at their gym.

      The deck was a birthday gift from Ronny. Like all of his projects, it was beautifully executed, the cherry stain gleaming, the nails evenly sunk, a discreet nook for his gas grill. They’d lived in the three-bedroom ranch since 1974, the year that Peter was born and that Ronny returned home to Durham from his final tour. After Peter went to college, they’d added the den. Later, when it became clear he wouldn’t be visiting, they’d turned Peter’s room into a craft studio where she made ornaments for their church’s annual Christmas fundraiser.

      More recently, Ronny had redone the kitchen and both bathrooms. Nothing could be done about the house’s boxy, brick exterior, but with each addition, its interior more closely resembled the home Ruth wished they could afford. She was proud of what they’d done with it. The neighborhood kept changing, though. A tienda had opened up a block from them, its front windows plastered with ads for phone cards that she couldn’t read and the bright jerseys of Mexican soccer teams. There was now a halfway house for ex-cons a few streets over, and Ronny taught weekly Bible Study there with a friend from his North Baptist’s Men’s Group. Their new neighbor on the right was an artist who refused to mow her law or to let Ronny do it for her. To be polite, they had gone to an opening of hers at a downtown gallery a few months ago, but all her paintings had been nude self-portraits. Ronny could barely make eye contact with her after that. The paintings weren’t even that good; her face looked flat and she’d clearly been blindfolded when she’d done her boobs and hips.

      Thinking of all this made Ruth laugh. Cancer did that, at least: helped sift the essential from the mundane. The sun was warm on her skin and that was real, as was the smooth half-acre of grass that stretched out behind the house. She loved walking barefoot through the grass to pick corn, tomatoes and berries from Ronny’s garden. And they were just a few miles away from Duke Forest where for decades she’d hiked the trails. Those woods were one of the great joys of her life. In them, she felt most like the girl she’d once been, the one who’d collected bugs and who’d wanted, until she’d barely passed chemistry junior year, to be a scientist.

      Her cell phone rang. Buster barked once and then fell back into his nap. She answered, expecting to hear Janet’s voice.

      “Mrs. Davis?” a man asked.

      “Speaking,” Ruth said, slipping into the smooth, vacant tone she used to take calls at the pediatrician’s office where she worked as a receptionist.

      “This is Felix Rivera.”

      She hesitated, unable to place his name.

      “Peter’s Felix.”

      “Oh,” she said.

      “I know this is unexpected, so let me get right to the point. There’s a ticket waiting for you on a 12:05 non-stop flight today out of Raleigh-Durham. It arrives four hours before the ceremony and a driver will take you directly to the hotel. I booked a room for you and a return flight for Monday.” His voice was smooth and deep, unlike Peter’s, which bore a lilt that sometimes made her cringe.

      Ruth didn’t know what to say, so she went with good manners. “That’s certainly generous,” she began. “But I don’t see how it would be possible.” When she’d asked Dr. Patel about flying, he’d frowned and pushed his rimless glasses up on his nose. He’d gotten

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