Ray and his second wife drove into Bakerton on a clear winter morning, in a Ford they’d rented at the Pittsburgh airport. They’d been off the highway for two hours, traveling a road that snaked through mountains, alongside streams and frozen fields. Their flight had left Houston at dawn. They’d come a thousand miles to attend a small party at the Bakerton fire hall, to celebrate his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary.
The invitation had arrived one morning in the mail; when Ray came home from work Evie was already on the phone with his mother. Of course we’ll come, Evie said. We’re overdue for a visit. In six years the women had met just twice, though they spoke every month on the phone. Each Christmas, Evie suggested spending the holiday in Pennsylvania, but always there was a reason not to: work, a slipped disk in Ray’s back, the weekend ranch they’d bought and were moving into bit by bit, where they’d eventually retire. A few years ago, Ray and a buddy had quit their jobs at Exxon and started their own company. For eight months they drilled; then—their houses remortgaged, their credit nearly exhausted—they struck oil. The venture was as consuming as a new baby; years passed without his noticing. In that time his parents had grown older; Bakerton, even farther away.