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Besides them, only three other tables were taken. “Not really,” she said. “I told you, things have changed. I’m sure you noticed the out-of-business signs. A lot of people have left town. It’s hard to find work around here. Unless something is done, Newport Falls is going to turn into a ghost town.”
“But Lois Lane is going to save it. Or do you see yourself as Brenda Starr?”
“Neither,” she said coldly. “This is my hometown. I love it here. I love the fact that when I’m sick, I can count on Mrs. Crutchfield to make me chicken soup. I can count on Ms. Faunally to bring me her homemade strawberry jelly in the spring. I can count on the Wellers to entertain the entire town at Halloween. I can count on Mr. Pete to know I’m entertaining if I buy an extra package of steaks at his grocery store. I can count on the wild azaleas to bloom like crazy every summer. I know some people don’t like small towns, but—”
“You do. I got it, Devonworth. But not everyone has such fond memories of this place.”
She stopped. Jack’s father had died the year after he left for college. They had buried him in the town cemetery, not too far from where her parents were buried. “I know,” she said. “But your memories aren’t all bad, are they?”
“No. Thanks to you…and Matt,” he said, adding Matt’s name almost as an afterthought.
“Lots of other people cared about you, too,” Katie said. “Lots of other people still do. Mr. Pete was just asking me about you the other day.”
“How’s his business?” Jack asked. He had worked for Mr. Pete for years, bagging groceries and helping out around the store.
“Like everything else, not great.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jack said. Then without skipping a beat he said, “Should we order?”
Katie ate her meal in silence, inwardly steaming about the cold, callous way Jack had handled the news of Mr. Pete’s business. How could he be so offhand about a man who had been nothing but kind to him? After they finished eating, she said, “Do you plan on seeing anyone else while you’re here?”
He stood up and took her coat off the hook, held it open for her. “No.”
“No?” she repeated as she slipped into her coat. “I’m sure Mrs. Bayons would like to see you.”
“I don’t have time,” he said.
“Maybe tomorrow—”
“No. I have something to take care of in the morning. After which I’m going directly to your office. I have to be back in the city tomorrow night.”
“Oh, right.” For his date with Carol.
“I doubt I have anything to say to anyone here, anyway.”
His aim had been direct and sharp. She stopped walking and looked at him, hurt. She got the message. Jack had broken all connection to Newport Falls.
But Jack appeared oblivious to her pain. He said goodbye to Joe and held the door open for her. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
But she didn’t have a car. This morning, despite the fact that it was January and freezing cold, she had ridden her bike. She told Jack.
He looked at her, surprised. “You rode your bike in this weather?”
“Why not? The roads are clear. Besides, I wanted exercise.”
“You’re not still living at your parents’ place, are you?”
Her parents’ farm was about five miles outside of town. More than a hundred acres, it included an old and rather worn Victorian house and a pond where they had fished and swum in the summers, ice-skated in the winters. “I’ve moved back there, yes.”
“It’s too far and too cold to ride all the way back. I’ll drive you. I rented a car at the airport.”
But she didn’t think she could stand one more minute talking to him or not talking to him, as the case might be. What had happened to her friend? To the warm, caring, funny guy whom she had loved with all of her heart?
Outside the newspaper, she stopped at the bike rack on the sidewalk. There was no lock on her bike, none was needed in Newport Falls. “Thanks for dinner,” she said. She felt a raindrop, then another. No matter, she was used to riding in all types of weather.
Jack grabbed her hand and stopped her. He hesitated a moment and then said, “You can’t save the world, Devonworth.”
“I don’t want to save the world, Reilly. Just Newport Falls.”
He held tight, pulling her back toward him. “I can’t let you go like this.”
“Why not?” she asked, her heart pounding.
“Because,” he said, dropping her hand and motioning toward the sky, “it’s raining.”
She pulled her sneakers out of her backpack. “You used to ride your bike in the rain all the time,” she replied as she switched shoes right there on the sidewalk. “Or did you forget about that, too?” When she was finished, she shoved her pumps into her bag and hopped on her bike as gracefully as she could. “See you tomorrow.”
She pedaled through the dark streets. She knew each and every home by heart. They were inhabited by friends, by people she had known her entire life. As she drove by the yellow bungalow on the corner, she knew that the blue light flickering on the first floor meant Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were sitting in their matching La-Z-Boys, watching Jeopardy on the living-room TV. She pedaled past old Mrs. Honeywell’s house. She knew the dim light in the second-floor window meant Mrs. Honeywell was tucked into bed, petting her white poodle, Betsy, and reading one of the bloody mysteries she was so fond of. She passed by the little red house on the corner. The house was dark because its owners, Jan and Tony Bintlif, and their newborn son, Alex, were visiting Jan’s parents in Florida.
She was glad it was raining, because if anyone saw her in the dark gloom of this January night, they wouldn’t notice her tears. Jack was right about one thing: she desperately wanted to save Newport Falls. She would never again find a place where everyone knew not only her first and last name, but her middle name, as well. A place where people didn’t have to worry about locking their doors. A place where stranger was a foreign word.
Unfortunately, Marcella was right. Katie wouldn’t be able to save the town without Jack’s help.
When headlights flashed behind her, Katie rode over to the side of the road. But the car didn’t pass. Instead, it pulled up alongside her. “You sure you don’t want a ride?” It was Jack.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Good night.”
He slowed the car down, and for a minute she thought he was going to turn around. But he didn’t. He followed behind her, his headlights illuminating the way.
Jack followed her all the way home. He pulled his car into her driveway, parking behind her. He knew she was annoyed but he didn’t care. He wasn’t about to let her ride her bike on a rainy night alone. It made no difference that Newport Falls was the safest place in the country. The roads were slick and a tired driver might not notice someone pedaling a bike on the side of the road. After all, who in their right mind would ride a bike to work in January?
Katie, of course. She had always done things differently from anyone else. Eccentric, they’d call her in New York City. There had never been, nor would there ever be, another woman like her. Feisty and opinionated, beautiful and brainy, with a killer body and a heart of gold.
When Katie tapped on his window, he rolled it down. “You didn’t need to follow me home,” she said.
“What?” he said, pretending to be surprised. “I thought this was the way to the inn!” The inn, which everyone knew, was directly next to the diner.
Katie grinned. It was enough to make him smile. He nodded toward her parents’ house. “It still looks the same.”
Katie nodded. “Thanks for following me,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then she bounded off toward the house.
Part of him wanted to chase after her. Open a bottle of wine and sit by the fire, just the two of them. He would tell her how nice it was to see her again. Explain how badly he felt that they had lost contact. How he wanted to make things right…
He stopped himself. He could not allow old feelings to surface. He reminded himself once again that Katie had long ago stopped caring for him, and only a fool would think otherwise. As he had heard her say in her office, she had turned to him only as a last resort. And it was only for money.
But her heart was in the right place. He could see why she was attached to Newport Falls, and he knew why she was desperate to save it. How it had changed since he had grown up here! There was a distinct creakiness to the town now, as if it were suffering from a terminal illness. The changes were not subtle. For Sale signs littering yards. Stores with windows boarded up. Empty streets and restaurants. It made him sad to think that Newport Falls might soon be just as Katie had said. A ghost town.
Jack drove back to the inn, mulling over all the thoughts that cluttered his mind. He didn’t like feeling this way, his mind in turmoil. He found himself yearning to be back in the safe, sterile confines of his office. His life had a comfortable rhythm, revolving around work. There were women, of course. Plenty of women. But his relationships were based on sex, not emotion.
But the gossip columnists were wrong when they said he did not want to commit. He was envious of his peers with wives and families. He could only hope he would be so lucky one day. But first, he needed to find the right woman.
And to forget about Katie.
Three
Katie woke up the next morning feeling as if she had just dodged a bullet. She was surprised by her feelings for Jack. She had hoped that their years apart would’ve lessened her desire for him, that she was finally over him.
For a while at least, she had half convinced herself she had succeeded. After all, it had been so awkward in the diner. It hadn’t seemed as strange being with Jack in New York. But to be having dinner with the man she had loved so intensely, in the place where they had spent so much time, was odd and uncomfortable, to say the least. He had changed since they were last at Joe’s Diner. Jack was still handsome, there was no doubt about that. But it wasn’t his looks that had attracted Katie. It was his heart.
But just when she was certain that he had hardened over the years, that her friend was unrecognizable, he went and followed her home. Sweet and a little crazy, it was a total Jack thing to do.
Thankfully she had possessed enough self-control and self-respect not to invite him in. After all, the end result would have been disastrous. She probably would’ve confessed her true feelings or, worse yet, acted on them. And Jack, once again, would’ve run for the hills. She would have been left brokenhearted all over again. And she would’ve let down all the people who worked for her. All the people who were dependent upon Jack investing in The Falls.
Damn! She had half hoped that Jack really had changed. That his tough childhood had finally caught up with him and he’d lost the sweetness he had once preserved so effortlessly. It would have been understandable. After all, despite his recent success, life had given him many reasons to be bitter. He’d never known his mother, nor had he known any other relatives besides his father. And although Katie had always felt Jack’s father loved him, he was too incapacitated to function as a parent. Jack had grown up in a one-bedroom shack on the outskirts of town. Many times the house had no running water or heat. But Jack never grieved over his situation. He’d worked as long as Katie could remember, paying for his own clothes and groceries. He raised not only himself, but took care of his father, as well.
There was no self-pity, either. “There’re a lot of people who have it worse than me,” he’d said whenever she or Matt would express concern. And that may have been true. One thing was certain, though. No one in Newport Falls had it worse than Jack Reilly.
And, because of that, Jack always had to fight for respect. There were a couple of incidents in which Jack was blamed for something he didn’t do—like when the tools were stolen from the hardware store and the time someone robbed the Creeley house. But in both instances Jack was exonerated. It seemed like some people just couldn’t believe a boy who had grown up with a rotten father could be so decent and kind. But he was.
Katie remembered the spring day she, Matt and Jack were walking home from school and saw black smoke billowing out of the Pelton home. Mrs. Pelton was crying on the street, comforting her six-year-old son, Frank. “They’re still inside,” the boy was screaming. “Rosie’s still inside.”
Rosie was the family dog, a four-year-old golden retriever who had just had puppies. A normally obedient dog, Rosie had sensed danger and refused to leave her babies. Mrs. Pelton and Frank had run out of the house, narrowly escaping, but the dogs were trapped in the boy’s second-floor bedroom.
Before Katie could stop him, Jack had climbed the tree in front of the Pelton home. He jumped from the tree to the roof, just as he had done at her house many times. When he tried to open the window and found it locked, he kicked it in, shattering the glass. He pulled his T-shirt up over his mouth and climbed inside.
Both Katie and Matt had pleaded with him to stay outside with them. But when it became apparent Jack wasn’t going to listen, Matt followed him up the tree.
Suddenly, Jack appeared at the window with a puppy in his hands. One at a time he handed them to Matt, who passed them down to Katie. When all four puppies were rescued, Jack appeared with Rosie. They escaped just as the flames licked the window. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the house was destroyed.
Jack became a local hero after that. The town even gave him a special award at a picnic in his honor. But his father didn’t show. The night of the picnic Katie could see Jack looking around for him. Afterward, when she mentioned it, he had blown it off in his typical casual manner. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “I didn’t expect him to be there.” But she knew whether he expected him or not, it still hurt. “You guys were there,” he said. “That’s what counts.”
She always knew Jack would leave town as soon as he could. She wasn’t surprised when he got a full academic scholarship to Princeton. Nor was she surprised when he chose prestigious summer internships over bagging groceries in Newport Falls. Although she told herself that it was the logical thing to do, her heart still ached. She missed Jack, longed for him. And she held on to the hope that one day he would feel the same way about her.
But each year he wrote less and less. She and Matt found themselves comparing notes, trying to read between the lines in Jack’s abbreviated letters. Although he returned when her father died and stayed with her for an entire week, it was clear their relationship had run its course. When Jack graduated from college and took a position in London, Katie couldn’t hide her devastation. She knew that even though he said when he returned, things would be as they once were between them, his promise was an empty one. Their friendship was all but over.
With Jack in Europe and her father gone, Katie had relied more than ever on her old friend Matt. Everyone had assumed she and Matt were a couple long before it had occurred to Katie. She had just never seen Matt that way. But when her mother became ill and jumped on the bandwagon, as well, Katie had forced herself to see him as a potential candidate for romance.
Still, Katie held out for Jack. Then one day Matt informed her that Jack was the one who had encouraged him to ask her out in the first place. Matt told her that Jack had always known the two of them were meant for each other. That Jack had even encouraged him to marry her.
Katie had been stunned. But then she thought back to the day at the creek, and it all seemed to make sense. Jack had never loved her. If he had, he wouldn’t have left.
As Katie recalled those days so long ago, she poured herself a cup of coffee and curled up on the living-room couch. She remembered that when she had decided to marry Matt, she’d told herself she was making a wise decision. She would be with her friend, her best friend, the remainder of her life. It was the only way to assure that he wouldn’t leave her, too, that she wouldn’t suffer another heartbreak.
But, of course, she had. Marriage was no insurance against pain.
Theirs had lasted only six years. She had cut him free, just as he had wished. Not only had she given him his freedom, she had forgiven him.
She realized that she had not extended the same courtesy to Jack. As much as she tried, her heart had never let him go. She had hung on to her feelings like a sole survivor on a sinking ship. She needed to let him go, finally and forever.
She was embarrassed by her behavior the previous evening. Jack had come to Newport Falls to try to help her, yet she had returned his kindness by behaving like a spurned lover.
Katie set down her coffee. She was thankful to have another day with her old friend. She would apologize to Jack and make it up to him. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was almost eight. Jack said he had some business to take care of before heading to the office. And she knew just where to find him.
Jack walked through the arched gates of the cemetery, carrying three bouquets of red roses. The temperature had dropped sharply and the rain had turned to snow. Several inches were already on the ground. Jack glanced around, admiring the familiar landscape. The cemetery seemed to be the only place in Newport Falls that was just as he remembered. Beautiful, yet desolate.
He stepped over the withered, barren rosebushes and made his way over to where his father was buried. Jack had been here several times to pay respects, though the visits were never pleasant. It wasn’t just his father’s death that saddened him, but his life. His father had been an alcoholic for as long as Jack could remember. His life had been a graveyard of missed opportunities.
Jack’s father had never recovered from the loss of the woman he loved so dearly. He tried at first, attempting to reclaim his sanity by dropping out of college and returning to Newport Falls. But even old friends couldn’t save him from the guilt. Stalked by invisible demons, he found solace only in alcohol. Jack couldn’t remember a time when his father was employed. Nor could he remember his father ever showing any tenderness toward him. Jack had grown up fast, forced to fend not only for himself, but many times, for his father, as well. Jack had been determined to make the town proud of him, determined that his fate would be different than his father’s. He wouldn’t allow himself to be destroyed by love. But it seemed the harder he tried to escape, the more furiously fate pursued him.
When Katie had married Matt, Jack had found escape from his pain not through the bottle, but work. He went to Yale for his MBA. He was willing to work longer, harder than anyone else. And his determination paid off. In a business built on family contacts, Jack climbed his way up the ladder the old-fashioned way, rung by rung.
Jack wished he had known his father better. He wished he could talk to him, tell him that he now understood the pain. He now understood why his father shut himself off from the world. Shut himself off from his only child.
Jack placed one bouquet of red roses on his father’s grave and stood up, brushing the snow off his pants. But he wasn’t ready to leave. He walked toward the old oak tree where the Devonworths were buried.
At first he had trouble finding their graves. The snow was falling faster now, sticking to the ground in fat, white clumps. But he persevered, brushing the snow off the tombstones until he found their matching white ones. Jack had known they would not have anything elaborate, anything that drew attention to the spot. They were plain, simple people in life, and he knew that was the way they wanted to be remembered.
As Jack placed the remaining roses on their grave, he felt a rush of emotion. The Devonworths always stood behind him. No matter what was happening at home, he could always count on them for support. They had welcomed him into their home for meals and holidays, always treating him with love and respect.
He would’ve liked to repay their kindness. To promise them that he would do his best to take care of their daughter. But it was too late for promises.
He turned to leave. He had a terrible task to deal with today. On some level he had known from the moment Katie had asked him for money that his company could not invest. Yet he had convinced himself that perhaps things had changed, perhaps The Falls was not the simple paper he remembered. He’d been kidding himself, and instead of just leaving after his meetings yesterday, he had extended his visit. Why? Because of some lingering sentiment toward Katie. But he couldn’t help her. He doubted anyone could. It didn’t matter what reporters she had working for her. It didn’t matter how many awards they won or what syndicated columns Katie could pick up.
A paper in a dying town was a losing investment.
“Jack?”
At first he thought he was imagining things. But there she was, underneath the cemetery’s arched gates. “Katie,” he breathed.
She walked toward him. Snowflakes had attached to her long lashes. The ends of her red scarf, wrapped around her slender neck, blew sideways in the wind. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I wanted to talk to you. Away from the office.”
“But how did you know I’d be here?”
“You haven’t been back in years. What other business could you possibly have?”
He smiled. “Good work, detective.”
He glanced at the entranceway, and his smile evaporated as he recognized Katie’s bike parked outside. The thought of her riding her bike five miles in a snowstorm was like an ice pick going through his heart. He asked, “What was so important that it couldn’t wait?”
“I needed to apologize. You came back here to help me and I’ve had a chip on my shoulder ever since you arrived.”
Once again Jack thought of her parents buried behind him. Katie had lost her parents, her husband, and was about to lose the only other thing that mattered to her—her paper. She had been dealing with this all alone because he had hung her out to dry. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” She looked at him and her eyes welled with tears. Instinct took over and he wrapped his arms around her. “Hey,” he said, “it’s me, Jack. There’s no need for apologies. I’m the one who owes you an apology.”
She seemed so light, almost ethereal. He wanted to hold her and protect her from the world. Suddenly, he didn’t think he could ever let go.
