A Bend in the Road Read Free Page B

grounds, tulips and azaleas bloomed each spring, and
chrysanthemums blossomed in the fall. Sarah had taken a tour when she’d first
arrived. Though the gardens were between seasons, she’d nonetheless left the
palace wanting to live within walking distance so she could pass its gates each
day.
    She’d moved
into a quaint apartment on Middle Street a few blocks away, in the heart of
downtown. The apartment was up the stairs and three doors away from the
pharmacy where in 1898 Caleb Bradham had first marketed Brad’s drink, which the
world came to know as Pepsi-Cola. Around the corner was the Episcopal church, a
stately brick structure shaded with towering magnolias, whose doors first
opened in 1718. When she left her apartment to take her walk, Sarah passed both
sites as she made her way to Front Street, where many of the old mansions had
stood gracefully for the past two hundred years.
    What she really
admired, however, was the fact that most of the homes had been painstakingly
restored over the past fifty years, one house at a time. Unlike Williamsburg,
Virginia, which was restored largely through a grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation, New Bern had appealed to its citizens and they had responded. The
sense of community had lured her parents here four years earlier; she’d known
nothing about New Bern until she’d moved to town last June.  As she walked, she reflected on how
different New Bern was from Baltimore, Maryland, where she’d been born and
raised, where she’d lived until just a few months earlier. Though Baltimore had
its own rich history, it was a city first and foremost. New Bern, on the other
hand, was a small southern town, relatively isolated and largely uninterested
in keeping up with the ever quickening pace of life elsewhere. Here, people
would wave as she passed them on the street, and any question she asked usually
solicited a long, slow-paced answer, generally peppered with references to
people or events that she’d never heard of before, as if everything and
everyone were somehow connected. Usually it was nice, other times it drove her
batty.
    Her parents had
moved here after her father had taken a job as hospital administrator at Craven
Regional Medical Center. Once Sarah’s divorce had been finalized, they’d begun
to prod her to move down as well. Knowing how her mother was, she’d put it off
for a year. Not that Sarah didn’t love her mother, it was just that her mother
could sometimes be . . .draining, for lack of a better word. Still, for peace
of mind she’d finally taken their advice, and so far, thankfully, she hadn’t
regretted it. It was exactly what she needed, but as charming as this town was,
there was no way she saw herself living here forever.  New Bern, she’d learned almost right away, was not a town for
singles. There weren’t many places to meet people, and the ones her own age
that she had met were already married, with families of their own. As in many
southern towns, there was still a social order that defined town life. With
most people married, it was hard for a single woman to find a place to fit in,
or even to start.  Especially someone
who was divorced and completely new to the area.  It was, however, an ideal place to raise children, and sometimes
as she walked, Sarah liked to imagine that things had turned out differently
for her. As a young girl, she’d always assumed she would have the kind of life
she wanted: marriage, children, a home in a neighborhood where families
gathered in the yards on Friday evenings after work was finished for the week.
That was the kind of life she’d had as a child, and it was the kind she wanted
as an adult. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Things in life seldom did,
she’d come to understand.  For a while,
though, she had believed anything was possible, especially when she’d met
Michael. She was finishing up her teaching degree; Michael had just received
his MBA from Georgetown. His family, one of the most