There was a loud rumble from the street that Alice, in her shocked state, might have ignored—if she hadn’t heard a kid call out from across the diner: “Look, Daddy, a bulldozer.”
The kid was on his knees in a booth, hands planted on the window, staring out at Main Street. A massive bulldozer with its metal blade raised came trundling past the diner.
Everything was happening too fast. Like experiencing the wall and ceiling collapse all over again.
But this time Alice didn’t stand frozen for long.
She bolted toward the diner’s front door, ignoring Becca, who called her name.
Alice flung open the door and flew onto the sidewalk. She sprinted toward the bookstore, determined to catch the bulldozer and stop this madness.
But to her amazement, she wasn’t the only one with this idea.
The bulldozer slowed and then came to a stop. A person blocked its path. It was Kris Cox, wearing her blazer and gold watch and brandishing a shovel.
“Go back,” Kris yelled. “There’ll be no destruction today.”
Alice joined her. “Kris, what are you doing here?”
“I’m doing what I can to stop that bastard, Darrell Townsend, from destroying Blithedale. We can’t let this happen. We can’t let him hurt this town. It’s precisely what he’s planned all along.”
The driver of the bulldozer, a man in a yellow hard hat, honked his horn. “Hey, get out of the way, ladies.”
Alice ignored him. “But Darrell and Bunce signed—”
“The ink hasn’t even dried,” Kris said, cutting her off. “We can still get Darrell to back out. We’ve done it before. Are you with or against Darrell Townsend?”
“Uh,” Alice said. “Against, of course.”
“Good.” Kris thrust the shovel at her. “You take this. Hold off the bulldozer. I’ll go find Darrell—they say he’s at home in that monstrosity in the woods—and I’ll convince him to back out of the deal with Bunce.”
“But how?”
“Let me worry about that,” Kris said, already jogging away from the bookstore, heading down the street.
The bulldozer honked again, and the driver leaned out of his seat, glaring at Alice.
“I’m trying to do my job.”
“But you can’t just demolish the place. There are books inside. There’s an old wardrobe with a red door that—”
Chief Jimbo shuffled toward them and said, “Everyone calm down.”
He gave Alice’s shovel a raised eyebrow and held out a hand.
“You’re not going to hit anyone, are you?” There was a slight tremble to his voice and he kept his distance, even as he reached toward her. “You don’t seem the type.”
For once, Chief Jimbo was right. She wasn’t the type. She couldn’t actually raise a weapon against this bulldozer driver, who was, as he’d said himself, only doing his job.
She lowered the shovel. “I can’t—”
A pair of hands wrapped around her from behind. Chief Jimbo leapt forward and yanked the shovel from her hands.
“Hey,” she cried out, glancing back at the man who’d grabbed her. “Let me go.”
Another man in a hard hat. He was dragging her away, her heels scraping against the blacktop. She struggled to free herself, but he’d managed to lock her in a tight embrace.
“Calm down, lady,” the guy said. “Just calm down.”
She would’ve liked to kick him. But a roar went up from the bulldozer and it lurched forward, and instead of kicking, she screamed, “No, stop!”
But the bulldozer didn’t stop. It barrelled forward, straight into the front of the bookstore building. There was a sickening crunch as it tore into the brick, punching a giant hole. Then it backed away, and Alice wiggled free from the man’s grip and jumped forward. But Chief Jimbo stood in her way, hands held up.
“It’s not safe, Miss Hartford. Not safe.”
Before she could get around him, the bulldozer had crashed into the bookstore again, this time setting off a chain reaction. Much of the rest of the wall fell. Then the ceiling, no longer having enough support, either on the front or the back, collapsed.
An enormous crash. Dust rising in a great cloud.
The whole bookstore lay in ruin.
And then her tears came. They ran down her face and she stumbled backward into someone’s embrace. She didn’t bother to look who it was. She couldn’t tear her gaze free from the disaster in front of her.
As she watched the bulldozer drive into Blithedale Books again, felling the remaining wall, sobs shook her body. The bookstore—her beloved bookstore—it was a ruin, the wardrobe crushed, her red door gone. The memories of her childhood and her mom, all the best parts of her life, had collapsed into a heap of rubble.
The hands that held her tightened. A man’s hands. She turned, her eyes blurred with tears, and saw him.
“It’s all right. I’m here now.”
Rich wrapped his arms around her, gathering her into a straightjacket hug.