News From Heaven

by Jennifer Haigh

  Joyce stares at him.

  “I’m not saying Ed owes me anything,” says Albert.

  Yes, you are, Joyce thinks. That’s exactly what you’re saying.

  “The way I figure, we ended up even. So.” He nods once, decisively. “Keep your goddamn bike.”

  He stomps off muttering and cursing, into the sunset like the hero in a Western. Calmly Joyce watches him go. Ed’s bike lies in the grass like an abandoned toy. She lifts it carefully and rolls it toward the garage, one hand on the handlebar, the other on the seat.

  I’ll walk behind you, keep you steady. Just like we did with the kids.

  More than anything in life, she wishes she’d let him. That she’d smiled for the camera. That she’d said yes. Life was gone before you knew it; how foolish she’d been to refuse any of it. In a couple of months Rebecca would arrive from Paris. They would rise before the neighbors and practice in the driveway, hidden by Ed’s birches: fresh cool mornings, dew on the grass. Her daughter would get a kick out of that. It was just the sort of project she’d enjoy.

  About the Author

  JENNIFER HAIGH is the author of four critically acclaimed novels: Faith, The Condition, Baker Towers, winner of the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for Fiction, and Mrs. Kimble, for which she won the PEN/Hemingway award. Her short stories have been published in many places, including The Atlantic, Granta, and The Best Americna Short Stories 2012. She lives in the Boston area.

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  Also by Jennifer Haigh

  Mrs. Kimble

  Baker Towers

  The Condition

  Faith

  Credits

  Cover illustration by Rob Arnold

  Copyright

  NEWS FROM HEAVEN. Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Haigh. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  These stories have appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications: “Beast and Bird” in The Atlantic Monthly (Kindle edition); “Something Sweet” in Harvard Review; “Broken Star” in Granta; “A Place in the Sun” in The Common; “Thrift” and “What Remains” in Five Points; “The Bottom of Things” and “Favorite Son” in Virginia Quarterly Review; and “Desiderata” in One Story.

  FIRST EDITION

  Epub Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062097385

  ISBN: 978-0-06-088964-7 (Hardcover)

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  Footnotes

  * Until he had to: the Thanksgiving Day debacle, Detroit over Green Bay, a rout no one could have predicted.