When Never Comes

by Barbara Davis

hour of sleep grabbed at a New Jersey rest stop had long since worn off. She needed food and sleep, and she needed them soon. Unfortunately, she hadn’t a clue where she was. Perhaps it was time to pull out the atlas and just pick a destination. As it turned out, she didn’t need the atlas. She had gone only a few miles when she spotted a billboard for HISTORIC DOWNTOWN SWEETWATER. The name felt familiar, conjuring images of cobbled streets and tiny hole-in-the wall galleries, a quaint inn with a wishing well in back—and Stephen. Without meaning to, she had stumbled onto one of the tiny towns they had visited on their honeymoon. They had stayed at a small inn whose name she couldn’t recall, had eaten fish and chips at a pub called the Rusty Nail, and then hung around for trivia. They’d been happy then, newlyweds with the whole world before them. What had happened to that couple? On impulse, she peeled off at the exit and followed the main road through the center of town. Not much had changed. The town was small and picturesque, the sidewalks lined with trendy shops and locally owned cafés. Her mouth watered at the thought of food, but her first order of business was finding a place to sleep. She pulled into the parking lot of the first inn she saw, an old converted farmhouse called the Fife and Feather. It was small but charming; two stories of clean white clapboard fronted with black shuttered windows and a small porch of weathered brick. A wreath of magnolia leaves and cre...