Saints at the River

Maggie and Allen return to Columbia to file their story. Maggie’s editor is impressed by Maggie’s gripping photo of the girl’s father. Maggie stops by Allen’s office, and Allen, without prodding, shares with Maggie the story of the accident that killed his wife and daughter. What pains him most, he admits, is that the two were on the way to pick him up at Dulles Airport outside Washington, and how mad he had been that no one had showed up to pick him up on time. He had grumbled all the way from the airport in the cab, even as it passed the traffic snarl on the other side that indicated an accident.

Maggie and Allen agree to have dinner that night in Maggie’s apartment. Over wine, he admits that he sees the article he is writing (which focuses on the family’s grief rather than the preservation of the river) as a second chance to be the father he never could be while he traveled: “I’ve been given another chance to be a good father by helping get another man’s daughter out of that river” (141). After years overseas on assignments watching the suffering of others, he can never forget the agonizing moment identifying his daughter in the morgue: “I felt death, not just observed it” (143).