Waking abruptly in pre-dawn darkness, I know it’s time to go. It will take twelve hours to drive back to Ohio, and I want to get a chunk of that behind me before noon.

Dressing in the dark of my old friends’ guestroom, I admit the real reason for leaving before they rise is that I don’t want to face them after last night’s confession. It hurts to recall Trudy’s bright kindergarten-teacher smile when she welcomed me on Friday. I’ll leave a note. She’ll understand that I needed an early start—she accepts everything. I wish to hell I did.

I shoulder my gym bag, tiptoe past their room, make it outside, ease the door shut and merge with the new day still cloaked in black. In the glow of the west-hanging moon, I see the gate is closed. I’ll have to open it, drive out and then re-close, making sure I get the balky thing completely shut the way Malcolm showed me. As he explained, without a fence, the deer decimate your garden. And he loves his tomatoes and peppers, Trudy, her flowers. I’ve loved them for over twenty years. The four of us met in college. Later, they took me in after Lynn divorced me, even let me live in their basement in Chapel Hill for three months, while I was unemployable.

I finally sobered up, left the basement and got a job inspecting houses in Columbus. First time my “family” drove north to visit, Mal clasped me in a bear hug and murmured near my ear, “You’re solid as a rock.” Untrue, but his claim gave me something to aspire to, while I put my life back together in a new place without Lynn.

I pull up and get out of the truck, mist swirling like smoke in my high beams. The air is alive with pine and leaf-rot. My hands are shaking. It’s damn chilly, but that isn’t it. It’s that I know—and would give anything not to. Clumsily, I find the bolt, slide it back and push. The gate creaks open; escape is imminent. Then I see them standing in the headlights’ glow at the edge of the forest, at least a dozen: antlered, steaming, still as rock formations.

“Exiles!” Malcolm said yesterday, laughing. “After I built the fence, I’d catch the herd standing outside, staring longingly.”

I realize I’m crying.

 I get back in the truck, begin pulling slowly through the gate, and then I’m back in their midnight kitchen, facing Mal, with Trudy gone to bed. While he washes and I dry, we keep our voices low.

“I met a woman—Rochelle—at the university,” he said.

“Colleague?”

“Grad student.”

“It’s serious?”

“We’ve been meeting for two years.”

My throat had almost completely closed. He spoke again, breezily.

“I’m telling Trudy this week, to give her time to deal with what’s coming before school starts again.”

Deal with it? I still hadn’t dealt with Lynn leaving me. After seven years, the wound was not yet a scar. Two flaps of skin have to meet and stay fully closed long enough for that to happen. I didn’t say to Mal that I still love my former wife, that I respect her for doing what she had to do. How could I disrespect my best friend for doing the same? (Easy. Because he’s married to the Perfect Woman.)

I put down the glass and embraced my old friend, recalling what he’d called me, solid as a rock. Maybe someday; not yet. All I said before we went to our separate rooms was, “I will continue to love you both, no matter what.” I’d wished a little for some whiskey to knock me out, but those days are thankfully past. All night I imagined scenarios in which I played the hero, brought them back from the brink, after which we locked arms in a group hug. Then the voice that kept me company in the weeks after Lynn left, when I still harbored hope: Get real. Not a damn thing you can do. I eventually slept.

I’ve stopped halfway through the gate. The silent creatures beyond don’t move, as if waiting to see what I’ll do. Something in my abdomen twists, the calf above my foot on the gas cramps. Exiles.

I start backing up. A light has come on in the kitchen. I can smell the dark roast that Trudy will brew, can taste the French toast Mal will make. I’ll relock the gate, go back inside, say the damn deer wouldn’t let me out. They’ll razz me unmercifully for trying to sneak off. I’ll stay just until the rising sun floods the land with light. Then I’ll go, give the truck its head, see if it can find home.