The sound was incredible; had it come from heaven itself, it could have been no less joyous, and all Cat and I could do was stare.

"Oh hey guys," Micah said, as if nothing extraordinary was happening, "we're just having some fun."

Micah didn't have to be told how Cat and I were feeling. Micah already knew.

My book tour lasted nearly three months. Cat was on her own with the kids, continuing to haul Ryan from one doctor to the next, and the incredibly stressful year had taken its toll on our marriage.

It wasn't any single occurrence that caused the tension between Cat and myself; in large part, it had to do with the fact that our marriage had been careening from one crisis to the next almost since we walked down the aisle. Our marriage had been less a permanent state of bliss than an attempt to endure a twisted version of survival camp, and the emotions had to flow somewhere.

For me, they flowed toward Cat, and for her, they flowed toward me. Our marriage was already under tremendous duress, and Ryan's problems became the breaking point.

While I worried tremendously about him, my worries were nothing compared to my wife's. I think it has something to do with motherhood. It's an almost instinctive response; she had carried Ryan in her womb, she had nursed him as a baby, and while I worked outside the home, she had been the one caring for him every minute of every day.

As the Christmas season approached, we seemed unable to enjoy each other's company as we once used to. We were also arguing more. I knew my wife not only deserved a break, but needed a break-she'd been on full-time duty for three months while I was on tour-and for Christmas, my gift to her was a trip to Hawaii. While she spent a week with a friend, I would stay home with the kids.

While it may strike some people as odd-if we were having trouble, why didn't I offer to go with her?-the answer is simple. Someone had to stay home to take care of Ryan. There was no family nearby to help, no neighbors willing to assist, no one, in fact, that we would trust to stay with him for a week. If my wife was to use the trip to relax, I had to stay at home. And I did.

Yet while she was gone, we got into an argument on the phone. Heated words were traded back and forth-neither of us had been treating the other well-and accusations were shouted. Finally, Cat shouted me down. "Look," she finally ground out, "I know your year has been hard. But do you want to know what my year has been like?" She paused to draw a ragged breath. "I wake up every morning and I think about Ryan. And I look at my beautiful child, a child that I love more than life itself, and I wonder to myself whether he'll ever have a friend. I wonder if he'll ever talk, or go to school, or play like other kids. I wonder if he'll ever have a date, or drive a car, or go to the prom. I wonder if he'll ever get married. And I spend all day driving from doctor to doctor, and no one can tell us what's wrong, and no one can tell us what to do. He'll be four years old in a little while, and I don't even know if he loves me. I think about this when I wake up, I think about this all day long, and it's the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I wake up crying in the middle of the night because of it." Her voice was beginning to crack. "That's what my year has been like."

When my wife finished, I didn't know what to say. Yes, I was worried about our son. But-and it pains me to admit this-my worries weren't like hers. I'd split my worries-between Ryan and my dad, Dana and my book-while my wife had zeroed in on our son. He'd become her entire world.

It was the first time I realized the depths of despair that my wife was enduring, and I felt sickened by the argument I'd started.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I didn't know it was like that for you."

My wife simply sniffed on the other end.

"Honey?" I whispered.

"Yeah?"

"I once made a vow to you to love you forever, and now it's time that I make another. I promise-I swear on my heart and soul-that I'm going to cure our son."

The next day, while Miles stayed at a neighbor's for the day, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a small table and chair. I bought this specific set for the simple reason that the seat had a seat belt with which I could strap my son in. Then, drawing on all the literature I'd read in the previous year, I buckled Ryan into a chair, opened a picturebook, and pointed to a picture of an apple while I held a tiny piece of candy out as a reward. I said the word aloud: Apple. Then said it again. And again. And again.

Apple. Apple. Apple. Apple. Apple. I repeated the words, willing my son to talk. I don't know that my desire for anything has ever been greater; I concentrated, I focused, my entire world was centered around my son and his ability to say this one single word.

Within minutes, Ryan grew bored. Then he started to fuss and fidget. After a few more minutes, he'd begun to cry, trying to get out of the chair. After that, he started to get mad. Ferociously mad. He screamed and balled his fists, he tried to pull out his hair. He tried to claw the skin from his arms. He growled and cried out as if possessed.

And I'd take his hands, hold them against the table so he couldn't hurt himself, and say: Apple.

Apple. Apple.

Over and over. He screamed and screamed and screamed. And I said it over and over. And he screamed and screamed.

After two hours, he could say A.

After four hours, he could say Ap.

And after six hours, my son-six hours of angry, frustrated, heartbreaking cries on Ryan's part- said in a tiny whispered voice: Apo.

Apple.

For a long moment, all I could do was stare at him. It had been so long, so exhausting, that I didn't believe he'd actually done it. I thought I'd heard him wrong, and I said the word again.

Ryan repeated it, and when he did, I jumped up from my seat and began dancing around the room, whooping for joy. I moved toward Ryan and offered a hug; though he didn't respond to my affection, he said the word again.

It was then that I began to cry.

Simply to hear the sound of his voice, his voice-no screams, no grunts, no shouts-was breathtaking. It was the sound of angels, as sweet as music. But more than that, I suddenly knew that Ryan could learn. And I then understood that this had been my greatest fear all along. Cat and I had spent over a year wondering what to do for Ryan and whether he would be okay, and by saying this one, simple word, I suddenly knew that there was a possibility that he could be.

This word gave me hope; until that moment, I hadn't realized that I'd lost every bit of it.

I was under no illusions that working with Ryan would be easy or that he would improve right away. I knew the road would be long and frustrating, but he was my son.

My son who could learn.

I knew then that I'd walk every step of the way with him, no matter how long it took. Taking his little face in my hands, and though I knew he wouldn't understand, I whispered: "You and I are going to work through this together, okay? And I'm not going to quit, so you can't either.

And you're going to be just fine."

The next day, I worked with Ryan for another six hours, and that night I called my wife in Hawaii. I apologized again for the argument we'd had, then put Miles on the phone so he could talk to his mom. When I got on the phone again, I said casually, "By the way, Ryan has something to say to you."

I put the receiver up to Ryan's head, held out a little piece of candy, and mouthed the words I wanted him to say. The words we'd worked on all day long. And into the receiver, he said: "I wuff you."

I love you. These were the first words Cat ever heard him say.

That night, I made the decision to quit my job selling pharmaceuticals, but I fully understood that I would continue to work a second job. In addition to writing my novels, I spent the next three years working with Ryan for three hours a day, seven days a week. And in the end, I would teach him to talk, one slow, painstaking word at a time.

It wasn't easy. Ryan didn't suddenly get better. It was a horribly frustrating process. It wasn't two steps forward, one back; it was like a half a step forward, then back almost to the beginning, then wander sideways for a while, then go further back than where you'd started in the first place, then finally tiny improvement. Months after we started, Ryan had begun to parrot words; he could say almost anything, but had no idea what words were or what they were used for. To him they were simply sounds to get a piece of candy. It would take months and months of effort to finally make him understand that the word apple meant something.

There were behavioral issues, too. Lack of eye contact. Poor motor skills. Food phobia. Potty training. Cat and I worked with him on all those areas as well. He was, for instance, terrified of the thought of going to the bathroom. To finally get Ryan potty-trained, I had to strip him down, have him drink glass after glass of juice, and literally sit in the bathroom with him, coaxing him to go in spite of his fears. For eight straight hours.

While the structured work with Ryan lasted three hours daily, I didn't want his entire experience with me to be one of struggle and challenge. Thus, my time with him wasn't limited to teaching and learning; I tried to spend at least an hour a day with him doing only the things he wanted to do. We would play on the jungle gym, take walks, coloring-whatever made him happy.

But at the same time I never forgot that I had another son. I remembered believing as a child that attention equaled love, and I didn't want Miles to grow up feeling as deprived as I had. I spent hours with Miles as well, doing the things he liked to do. We rode bikes and played catch, I coached his soccer teams, and he and I would eventually study Tae Kwon Do together.

Truly, my children had become my other vocation.

In May 1997, we moved back to New Bern, and began remodeling the home we live in today. It was a major construction project, one that took months, but by then, moving and remodeling- with all the associated stresses-seemed almost simple.

Cat and I continued to work with Ryan. In August, I finished my second novel, Message in a Bottle, and my sister called later that month to tell us that she and Bob were getting married.

Soon after that, Micah and Christine got engaged as well, and would be married the following summer. Micah's business continued to grow, and he'd even begun a second business, one that manufactured entertainment centers.

Though Dana had begun getting headaches again-she'd been prone to migraines long before she'd been diagnosed-her CAT scans continued to come back negative. Nearly five years had passed since she'd first had the surgery-at which point she would technically be in remission. My sister was married in a beautiful ceremony in Hawaii. For a moment, just a moment, all seemed right in my sister's world. She had the life she'd always dreamed of; she was married, had children, and even had horses she kept at the ranch.

Then, while on her honeymoon, Dana suddenly suffered another seizure. And when she got back, the CAT scan showed something it hadn't in years.

My sister's brain tumor was growing again.

Chapter 16

Valletta, Malta

February 11-12

In the previous four days-since the morning before our trip to Agra-we'd spent a total of five hours visiting both the Taj Mahal and Lalibela. Our flight time, by way of comparison, was nearly ten hours, or twice as long.

It was this slowing of the pace-and the extent of our travels to that point-that left both Micah and me feeling lethargic by the time we landed. But Malta, with its European flavor and atmosphere, energized us almost immediately.

The island was gorgeous, with white rocky cliffs plunging to the blue Mediterranean. The sky was cloudless, crisp and winter bright-it was our first stop where the temperature was cool-and after donning our jackets we boarded the buses and made our way to the various sites.

Because of the size of our group, we were split into three sections; ours would head first to the Hypogeum, an underground temple complex discovered in 1902 that was found to contain the remains of six to seven thousand bodies. The complex is a labyrinth, consisting of chambers built over three levels, and descending to a depth of nearly forty feet. Dating back to nearly 3,600 B.C., it is far older than either the Pyramids or Stonehenge. It is, in fact, the oldest known structure of any kind in the world, and had been carved from the limestone using the simplest of tools: bone, flint, and hard rocks.

Combined with the ruins in other parts of Malta that we'd visit-the Tarxien Temple, which is the oldest known freestanding statue of a deity, and the megalithic temples aboveground, which are the oldest freestanding stone buildings ever discovered-it represents one of the earliest advanced civilizations in the world. Yet no one knows who these early people were, where they came from, what happened to them, or where they went. The civilization seems to have vanished as mysteriously as it arrived.

Despite this fascinating history of the lost inhabitants, it was Malta itself that Micah seemed most interested in. As we drove along paved roads in which everyone obeyed traffic laws (by then, it seemed downright strange), I could see Micah smiling.

"You know what this reminds me of?" he asked.

"What?"

"My trip to Italy," he said. "Right after I graduated from college, when Tracy and I went biking around. It looked just like this. Well, parts of it anyway. That trip was a blast."

"Gee, really?" I feigned surprise. "Exploring, meeting new people, having fun? That doesn't sound like your kind of thing."

He smiled, no doubt thinking back to our Mission Gang days. "Did I ever tell you what happened when we first got to Europe?"

I shook my head.

"Well, Tracy and I flew into Madrid, but because we each had free miles on different airlines, we weren't on the same flight. We were supposed to land at about the same time, but when I went to his gate to meet him, he wasn't on the plane. The thing was, Tracy had everything in his suitcase-the guidebook, directions, maps, even the tools I needed to put my mountain bike back together. And I'm in a foreign country. No one spoke English, I couldn't read any of the signs, I couldn't even figure out who to ask to find out why Tracy hadn't arrived. I didn't even know where the city was in relation to the airport."

"What did you do?"

"I finally found some guy who spoke English and he helped me. I found out that Tracy got delayed, missed his flight, and that he'd be coming in the next day. But I still had nowhere to go.

I didn't even have a credit card back then. I finally found a couple of mechanics who helped me put the bike together, and after they pointed me in the direction of town, I just started pedaling. It took an hour to get downtown, and I still didn't know where to go, where I was going to sleep. I finally found a Hard Rock Cafe, and figuring I could at least find something in English, I went to get something to eat. And after that, things got a little easier."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I asked my waitress if she wanted to go out that night. So I went out on a date."

A little while later, Micah turned back to me. He'd been busy videotaping the drive; in the end, Micah would shoot six hours of video that he'd never end up watching. On the trip, however, you would have thought he'd been filming a documentary.

"Hey Nick-have you ever heard of the Hypogeum?"

I nodded. "I've read about it."

"Isn't it just supposed to be a tomb?"

"For the most part. But it's the oldest one ever discovered. That's why it's special."

He seemed lost in thought. "You know what I want a picture of?"

"What's that?"

"A picture of me lying down in the tomb. You know, pretending I'm dead. Wouldn't that be cool?"

"I think it would be kind of disgusting."

He gave me an airy wave. "Disgusting, cool-same thing."

Alas, Micah wouldn't get a chance to have his picture taken amid the dust and microscopic remains of the humans once buried in the Hypogeum.

The Hypogeum was entirely different from any other site we'd visited to that point. For starters, it was located beneath a building entirely unremarkable on the outside. It could have been a restaurant, business, or home-like the buildings on either side of it; the only reason we knew it was a museum were the words stenciled on the glass doors.

Inside, we were met by a very serious guide, who explained what we could expect: The Hypogeum was essentially sealed, to prevent decay by the elements. We would walk down the steps, and should watch our heads. We would be told where remains had once been discovered.

We would see a short movie about the Hypogeum first. Tours were scheduled every hour and it was imperative that we all stay together and move quickly. We should try not to interrupt, for there wasn't enough time to answer questions. We would not be allowed to take pictures. If we did, he would confiscate our cameras.

"This guy's like a prison guard," Micah whispered. "He doesn't even smile."

"Who? Mr. Cheerful?"

"I think he's sizing us up, trying to figure out who's going to follow the rules, and who isn't."

"I think he knows you're in the latter group. He keeps looking at you."

"Yeah," he said. "I noticed that. For such a happy guy, he's really pretty perceptive."

We were led into the climate-controlled, computer-enhanced, video-monitored control room and told to sit in the seats to watch the movie. There was no choice in the matter. You had to watch the movie. Our guide was taking attendance.

This, essentially, is what we learned over the next fifteen minutes: Not Much. No one knows who built it. No one knows why. No one knows what happened to the people who built it. No one knows where they came from originally. No one knows why it was designed the way it was. No one knows what the civilization was like. All they knew was that it was built long before the Pyramids.

The lights came on.