17
Amelia Bentley. I was almost sure you were going to turn down a job offer from me a second time.”
C.J. Cranford’s clipped pace and sleek silver blazer matched the glass-accented lobby of the downtown Dixon office building—fluorescent lights overhead, vertical floor-to-ceiling windows, slate-hued paint. Metallic letters spelled the words Cranford Communications on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk.
What Amelia wouldn’t give to be facing a disgruntled Mae in the closet-sized lobby of the News office instead. To hear the clunky chug of their old, half-broken—no, now completely dead—press instead of this quiet hum. She could barely even pick up the smell of ink over the bowl of flaky potpourri on the receptionist’s desk.
She accepted C.J.’s handshake. “Well, last time I already had a job. This time . . .”
This time the News was on its way to nonexistence, and Amelia to unemployment.
Had it really only been a week and a half since Logan had stood in front of their staff and announced his decision? The cost of fixing the press was simply too steep. And it was both too last-minute and too expensive to find another area printer to churn out this week’s paper.
The lightning strike had aided the decision he was probably eventually going to make all along.
Far as she knew, the sale to Cranford hadn’t been finalized yet. But he’d left for LA two days ago anyway, Charlie in tow, along with her last fragile piece of foolish hope that he might still change his mind.
He might as well have left the night they argued on the porch. Nothing had been the same since then. Didn’t matter that she actually understood why he’d made the choice he did. That somewhere, behind the cracks in her heart, she’d seen this coming.
The logic of his decision couldn’t come close to catching up with the ache wheeling through her. Oh, she missed him. Missed Charlie.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted. I get it.” C.J. pushed her low, russet ponytail over one shoulder. “You had an attachment to that paper. But I hope you’ll at least consider my offer. Let me show you around.”
Logan had cornered Amelia in the office after everyone else had left. Told her he’d asked Cranford to offer her a job once the sale was complete. “Even if they do permanently dissolve the News, they’ll still be covering an additional town. So it makes sense that they’d add a position. Obviously it should be you.”
If he’d expected her undying gratitude at that, he hadn’t gotten it. “Thanks, but I already had the opportunity to move to Dixon once, Logan. Maple Valley is home.”
His shoulders had dropped, as if she’d stuck the last pin in an already deflated balloon. “Home or just a hiding place, Amelia?”
The overly sweet mocha she’d downed on the forty-five-minute drive to Dixon churned in her stomach now. C.J. led her through a glass door and into a white-lighted open room with desks displaying oversized monitors that couldn’t be more than a couple years old. A whir of activity enlivened the space, fingers tapping on keyboards, the purr of printers—all of it both familiar and foreign at once.
“This is our ad and graphics department, as I’m sure you can tell by the mockups hanging everywhere. Our bread and butter, just like most papers.” Her heels clicked as she pushed through another door. “And this is where you’d spend your time.”
The Communicator’s newsroom had to be four times the size of the News’s. New Macs on every desk. A couple reporters looked up as she and C.J. wound through the room, but most were busy—on the phone or typing with earbuds in.
At the back of the room, they pushed through a final door, leading into a hallway of offices. C.J. let Amelia pass into her office first. None of the gleaming white of the outer offices. Instead, redwood furnishings offset mint-green walls.
“Used to be my dad’s office,” C.J. explained as she sat behind the desk. “Modern wasn’t so much his thing.”
“I like it.” Reminded her a little of Freddie’s office—not in size so much, or even décor. But in personality.
Funny how she’d never thought anyone else could ever quite fit in Freddie’s space—and how wrong Logan had proven her. He’d seemed so right in that office. So at home.
“Home or just a hiding place?”
Why couldn’t she stop hearing his voice? And would she ever get over the ache of missing him? Missing Charlie? Wishing she could hear Charlie call her Lia again?
“So.” C.J. flattened her palms on her desk. “We could do the regular old job-interview-type questions, but to be honest, this job is yours if you want it. You’re qualified. You’ve got the experience. I’d rather talk about what the transition is going to look like.”
“This is a full-time reporting position. We can throw as many of the Maple Valley–specific stories your way as possible, but you will need to help cover events or news in other communities, too. I think you’ll find the salary package satisfactory.”
C.J. kept talking about the job duties—scheduling and digital news and photographers. The minutes passed in a misty blur.
“Okay, I’m just rambling now. Let’s switch gears. Do you have any questions for me?”
Amelia rubbed her hands over her pants, mind clamoring for focus.
Pay attention. Whatever she’d said to Logan, the truth was, she needed this. Needed a job and a paycheck.
C.J. tapped a pencil against her desk. Right, a question.
“Well, I guess I’ve got one question. There’s a story I’ve been working on for a couple months. It’s actually been percolating for years, but I just recently got serious about it.” For the first time since she’d arrived in Dixon, something close to enthusiasm fought against her apathy. She told C.J. about the Kendall Wilkins story—how it’d started out as a search for a missing safe-deposit-box item and turned into a story about Paris and World War II and a friendship that spanned decades.
When she finished, C.J. stood. “Coffee?” She walked to the Keurig machine sitting on a corner counter. “Even Dad, in all his disdain for modernity, couldn’t deny the thrill of a fresh cup of coffee in thirty seconds.”
“I’m good. Thanks.”
C.J. started the machine, its gurgle filling the space until she turned. “How many words?”
Amelia blinked. “Thirteen hundred.”
C.J.’s laugh overpowered the Keurig’s noise. “You’re kidding, right? You know how much column space that is?”
“It was originally going to go in our anniversary issue.” The one that should’ve come out last week. Instead, she’d spent her days going from business to business, apologizing that none of the scheduled ads would run in the special issue . . . because there wasn’t going to be a special issue.
“Even if it was normal length, I’m not sure how it’s a story. You didn’t figure out what was supposed to be in the box and where it is now?”
“That’s kind of the point of the story—we started out looking for one thing and realized the story was more about friendship and heart and community.” Maybe it sounded sappy and saccharine. But Amelia had poured her heart into that article.
“But there’s nothing that makes it newsy, relevant.”
“There was when it was part of an anniversary issue.” She couldn’t manage to keep the frustration from her voice.
C.J. retrieved her coffee mug and circled her fingers around it, then studied her for a long moment. “Amelia, why did you come here today?”
“I don’t know.” Her words were soft and quick, out before she could tug them back.
“You don’t know?”
“I really don’t.” She stood. “And I’m really sorry, C.J. Thanks so much for giving me a chance—a second time. But I don’t think I’m the right person to work here.”
C.J. set her cup on a coaster, nodded. “Fair enough.”
Amelia started for the door.
“Amelia?”
“Yeah?”
“That girl from the coffee shop who was going to have the baby. The one all the people were wearing ribbons for. Did she have the baby?”
Amelia glanced over her shoulder to see C.J. holding two ribbons—one green, one yellow. Of course. She’d voted for twins.
“They’re my Maple Valley souvenirs.”
“Yeah, Megan had her baby. A girl. Healthy and big despite being a bit early.”
“Glad to hear it.” C.J. closed her fingers around the ribbons. “See you around, Bentley.”
“What on earth possessed you to make that call?”
Theo’s voice sounded distant with the hum of Logan’s fridge in his ears. Logan reached past a jug of milk that’d expired so far back he couldn’t bring himself to empty it out. Forty-eight hours back in LA and so far he and Charlie had existed on pizza and takeout.
“You could’ve at least given me some advance warning.”
He found a lone bottle of water near the back, then closed the refrigerator door and held the bottle toward Theo.
Theo only crossed his arms. Fine. Logan uncapped the bottle and took a swig. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to get groceries and clean and unpack their suitcases.
Find a way to settle back into life in LA. Pretend the goodbyes he’d said in Iowa—one in particular—hadn’t cut clean through him.
“Talk to me, Walker.”
“I had to do it, okay? It was the right thing to do.”
Making that call to Senator Hadley’s campaign manager had been a thousand kinds of uncomfortable. “I just think you should know there was a police report filed on me a couple weeks ago. Alleged assault.”
And oh, by the way, he might be facing a custody battle against his in-laws in coming months. Just saying the words had sent anxiety clawing through him.
The open patio doors off his apartment’s kitchen ushered in the sounds of his busy street—cars motoring down the road and kids playing in the complex’s outdoor pool. And heat—sticky and baking. He should be running the air-conditioner.
But something about closing up the place—shutting windows and sliding the patio doors—made him feel hemmed in. And it wasn’t only that. It was the constant noise, the claustrophobic traffic, that always-in-a-rush feeling that’d swept over him as soon as he and Charlie had stepped off the airplane into the crush of LAX.
In the span of two months, LA had stopped feeling like home.
But he’d had to come back. It was the only thing that made sense. He just wished he could’ve brought a piece of Iowa with him.
Theo was right, though. He could’ve given him some warning. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you first.”
“You weren’t even formally charged. We don’t know that it ever would’ve come up if you hadn’t said anything.”
“But if it had? If it was primary season and the other party was looking for something, anything, to use against Hadley, and they dug deep enough? Do you know how awful I’d feel?”
“So what happens now? Do we still have a job?” Theo leaned one hand on the peninsula counter that divided Logan’s kitchen from the living room, where Charlie sat at the coffee table coloring. Poor thing, her cheeks were red from the apartment’s warmth.
Logan capped his water bottle and crossed over to the patio doors, sliding them closed. He tapped the A/C on his way to the living-room window.
“You have a job no matter what, Theo. Even if the campaign decides I’m not a good fit, that doesn’t mean you’re out.”
“But . . . we’re partners. I guess I always pictured us doing this thing together.”
Logan closed the window and turned his gaze to his daughter. The curls that’d stopped at her chin two months ago now reached nearly to her shoulders. Freckles dotted her cheeks from so many afternoons out in Dad’s backyard, and she wore a series of too-large bracelets on one arm—Raegan’s.
“Theo.” Logan lowered his voice. “You know if . . . if I end up having to go to court, I would’ve had to back out anyway.” How he hoped he didn’t. He hadn’t heard from Rick and Helen since leaving Maple Valley, didn’t have a clue if Rick had gone through with his threat to meet with a lawyer.
But the threat was enough.
“It was the right thing to do.” He said the words again, a sigh stitched in. Maybe he was trying to convince himself as much as Theo. Not just about calling the campaign manager, but—he glanced around his apartment, dusty and unkempt after two months away—about this, all of it. Coming back so quickly. Leaving home.
Leaving Amelia.
It killed him the way they’d left things. The way he’d hurt her. The papers for the sale of the News sat on the peninsula counter even now, just waiting for his signature.
“When are they going to let you know what’s happening?”
The water bottle crinkled under Logan’s fingers. “Dunno.”
Theo sighed and crossed the room. He paused by Charlie to muss her hair. “Take care of that arm, Little Charlie.”
She saluted with her un-casted arm. “Aye aye, captain.” Who’d taught her that? Seth or Colt?
And had she noticed how much quieter their apartment was than Dad’s house? Because he sure did.
He saw Theo to the entryway. “I am sorry, man. I never meant to mess things up.”
Theo pulled open the apartment’s front door, someone else’s footsteps from down the hall sounding behind him. “I know you didn’t. Jill and I are heading out to Allentown this weekend, by the way. We’re going to try to get a townhouse or apartment. We’d rather do that than camp out in a hotel for a year and a half. We can ask around for you, too, if you want.”
“Sure, go ahead.” What would it hurt?
They parted, and Logan started toward the living room, only to hear another knock on the door. He angled back around. “Forget someth—”
Only it wasn’t Theo standing on the other side of the door. He gasped. “Beckett?”
His brother’s form filled the doorway, his rumpled clothes evidence of a cross-country plane ride.
“I heard you might need legal counsel.”
An honest-to-goodness laugh erupted from his lungs, hearty and homesick all at once. “Get in here.” He grabbed his brother by the shirt and pulled him into a hug. When he stepped back, he studied his little brother. His hair was longer than when Logan had seen him last, and the circles under his eyes deeper.
Either his little brother was working sixty-hour weeks . . . or the ghosts that’d chased him from Maple Valley haunted him still.
Very possibly both.
“Seriously, what are you doing here?”
“Don’t I get to see Charlie first?” He strode past Logan and into the living room. “Hey, kid, your favorite uncle is here.”
Charlie pushed away from the coffee table and met him halfway across the room. Beckett swung her into his arms, ruffling her hair. “I hear you’ve gotten talkative. And what’s up with that arm?”
She held her pink cast out like a display of show-and-tell. “You need to sign it.”
“That I do.”
“And then your uncle has to explain to his older brother what in the world he’s doing here.” But at the moment, Logan didn’t even care. He’d wished for a piece of Iowa, of home. And unlikely as it was, he now stood right in front of him.
The next two hours passed in a blink. He ordered pizza. Beckett played with Charlie and even helped Logan give the apartment something close to a real cleaning. By eight, Charlie had conked out on the couch, and Logan transferred her to her bedroom.
When he came back, it was to find Beckett looking through a scrapbook Logan usually kept stored on the shelf under the coffee table—clips of newspaper articles about candidates and speeches, all with his name somewhere in the story.
“That’s Emma’s doing, originally. Alena, our intern, insists on adding to it these days.”
Beckett flipped to a page with a photo of Logan standing with the governor. “It’s like when you were in high school and Mom saved all the school newspaper articles, all the ribbons and photos and whatever. Man, you drove me crazy back then.”
Logan reached for a piece of now-cold pizza from the box still sprawled atop the coffee table. “Gee, thanks.”
“No offense, but you were so stupidly good at everything. Perfect GPA. President of the student council. Valedictorian. And then to top it off, the guitar player who made all the girls swoon.”
“Uh, one girl. Emma.” He dropped into the recliner—the one Emma had called ugly and promised to eventually ban from the apartment. “You were the basketball star with the constant gaggle of cheerleaders around you.”
“That’s the other thing. You use words like gaggle.” Beckett grabbed the last slice from the pizza box.
“I’ve got a good vocab. So shoot me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a lawyer now, which means I speak legalese, which means I can out-dictionary you any day.”
They ate their cold pizza in quiet minutes while Beckett continued looking through the scrapbook. Only when he’d closed it did Logan ask again. “So you’re here because . . . ?”
Beckett tossed his pizza crust onto the cardboard box like he would’ve a basketball, his expression finally turning serious. “Because you’ve never once not been there when things got messy for me.”
Messy—the perfect word. Two months ago, life had been tidy. Maybe not perfect—there were hidden dusty spots, he knew that. Lingering hurt crouching behind a busy work schedule.
And to think he’d accused Amelia of hiding.
But at least he’d had some sense of direction before going back to Maple Valley.
“It’s just weird,” Logan said. “I’ve always had a plan, you know? Even if it was a halfway-iffy plan like staying in Iowa for a couple months to fix up a newspaper before selling it off.” But now? He still hadn’t signed the sale documents, and he could get a call any day from Hadley’s people, rescinding the job offer. He didn’t know whether to find a new nanny and a speech therapist here in California or wait to see if he ended up transitioning to Allentown.
And he’d left a huge chunk of his heart in the Midwest.
“I keep waiting to feel grounded.” Like when Emma was alive. Back when he’d been able to picture so clearly what the future looked like.
“Maybe you’re not supposed to feel grounded.” Beckett had shifted so he leaned forward now, folded hands dangling over his knees.
Logan lifted his head, let his expression ask his question for him.
“Maybe there comes a point when God doesn’t want you all grounded and secure and confident in your plans. Maybe he wants you churned up and uncertain for a while. So you’ll look to him, depend on him instead of your usual got-it-all-together Logan Walker roadmap.”
Logan’s conversation with Bear that day in the square came back. Bear had said something about the wide-open spaces of his future—that when you knew who you trusted, the openness became invigorating instead of intimidating.
Beckett straightened and rubbed his palms over his jeans before settling back against the couch. “Then again, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, and I’m the last one who should be giving advice, and you should hash this out with Dad.”
“No, you’re . . .” He met Beckett’s eyes. “You’re more right than you know.”
The foggy lemon smell of the Pledge they’d used to dust all the hard surfaces in the living room nearly masked the faint lingering smell of smoke damage. Somewhere a car honked.
Okay, God. If you need to take everything off my plate in order for me to hear you, go for it. If a clean slate and an invisible roadmap means I’ll learn how to trust you, then all right.
The lazy whir of the overhead fan and the distant moan of traffic settled into silence.
“Just a sec.” Beckett stood. “I left something in the hallway.”
His brother returned seconds later, Logan’s guitar case in hand.
“What? How did you get that?”
“Kate called the other night. Told me everything that’d happened recently and basically ordered me to get on a plane. And then Rae got on the line and said she’d already found a flight with a layover in Des Moines. They both met me there.”
And gave him the guitar. But why?
“Raegan said to remind you that you’re the one who told her it’s okay to have varied interests, multiple dreams, and change paths as many times as she needs to.”
He had said that, but he’d been talking about her part-time jobs . . . not his old love of music.
“And Kate said she’s not going to let Colton propose until you’re playing again, because she wants you to sing at their wedding.”
“Do we have pushy sisters or what?”
“And I say the least you can do in exchange for me coming all this way is promise me you’ll open this when you’re ready.”
He eyed the case. “That thing was out in the hall for two hours. What if someone had stolen it?”
“Then I wouldn’t have mentioned it, and you wouldn’t have been any the wiser.” Beckett set it aside. “When you’re ready, Logan. Oh, and one more thing.”
Beckett reached into his pocket and pulled out a flat, square paper envelope.
New guitar strings.
Three years of motherhood had aged Dani Malone, but in a good way, a graceful way, Amelia decided. Gone were her dark, waist-length curls, and in their place, a stylish pixie cut framed her face. Her cheeks were fuller, sprinkled with freckles and a few faint lines that made her seem older than her twenty-one years.
But there was a peace in her eyes that Amelia had never seen back when she was a scared barely-eighteen-year-old. High school senior. Pregnant. Desperate.
“Amelia?”
Amelia stood on the front steps of the miniscule bungalow home on 31st Street in Des Moines. Hadn’t even had to look up the address after writing it on so many unmailed envelopes, the letters to Mary she’d never sent. She’d simply ignored the turnoff for Maple Valley on her way back from the Cranford offices and found herself here.
“I know I should’ve called.”
Dani’s smile shifted out of surprise and into something warm as she ignored Amelia’s hesitance and lunged for a hug. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been waiting for this.” When she stepped back, there were tears in her eyes. “Come in. You’ve got good timing. My aunt watches Mary a couple days a week while I’m in class, and she just dropped her off ten minutes ago.”
Mary.
Weirdly, her heart didn’t even lurch at the thought of seeing the baby—no, now a three-year-old, just like Charlie—she’d once considered her daughter. Instead, a humming curiosity had settled in someplace between Dixon and here.
She followed Dani through the modest living room. Futon in place of a couch. Old fireplace that must not be usable considering the candles crowded into its base. A pile of textbooks on the coffee table.
“You’re taking classes?”
“Yep, summer courses just started. I’m finishing up my gen eds this summer at the community college and then transferring to ISU this fall.”
“What are you studying?”
Dani stopped near the kitchen. Its appliances looked like remnants of the seventies, the gold refrigerator crammed with crayon pictures. “Actually, you kind of helped me choose without realizing. I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but before I even got pregnant, when I’d only been coming to church a couple months, we were talking once after youth group about going to college and picking a major and all that. And I told you I had no idea what I wanted to do, that I didn’t think I had any major skills or talents, and all I knew was I didn’t want to end up living on welfare like my mom. I wanted to have a dream, I just couldn’t find one.”
Amelia did remember that. They’d been sitting on one of the ratty couches in the church youth room. Just that night Jeremy had told the group of kids it was his last night. His speaking career was getting off the ground, and he’d just landed his first book contract.
“I’ll never forget what you said. You said, ‘Dani, if you really want the dreams and desires in your heart to come into any kind of focus, maybe start by getting to know the one who gives us dreams in the first place.’”
“I said that, huh?” And she’d probably believed it, too. A wistfulness crept in then—for the faith she used to cling to.
“When Mary turned one and I started thinking about finally doing the college thing, it came back to me. I realized I wanted to do for other kids what you did for me—help them get to know God, I guess. But I’d like to do it outside church walls, so I’m double majoring in nonprofit administration and social work with the hope of eventually working for a youth organization.”
Could this really be the same kid who’d shown up at church an angry teenager, sullen and sick of her life? Amelia couldn’t find the words to express the mix of disbelief and pride and yes, even joy warming through her.
So when Dani turned toward a hallway, she just followed, wordless.
“Hey, Mare, I hope you finished picking up your bedroom like I asked, because we’ve got a visitor.” She turned to Amelia. “Just a warning for when you see her: She got this new bike helmet last week, and for the life of me, I can’t get her to take it off. She begged to wear it to bed last night.” Dani paused. “You knew I kept the name, right?”
Amelia nodded, gaze caught on the collage of photos hanging in the hallway. Photos of Mary as a baby, as a toddler, in a kiddie pool, going down a slide.
“It worked out well, actually,” Dani continued. “Mary is my grandmother’s name. She thinks Mare is named after her, of course, and she’s the only one I’ve never corrected. I tell everyone else the truth, though—that it’s Amelia Earhart’s middle name. Which always gets me funny looks from anyone who doesn’t . . . know.”
Dani’s explanation had slowed to a crawl before it stopped, probably because she’d seen what photo Amelia stared at now. The one of Dani holding Mary in the hospital—in that rocking chair in the nursery. Might have been snapped at the very moment the social worker had told Amelia and Jeremy the adoption wouldn’t be moving forward.
“I’m so sorry, Amelia.” She took a step closer. “Not sorry that I kept Mary because . . . because she’s my world, you know? But sorry it hurt you so much. After all you did for me, helping pay for all the medical bills, taking me to appointments when my mom refused to have anything to do with it all, everything. That’s why I’ve been trying to contact you. I just . . . wanted to say sorry.”
This time when Dani hugged her, Amelia let herself lean into it. She soaked up the apology, but more than that, the healing that came along with it. “And I’m sorry for holding it against you.” Tears stung her eyes. “I’m sorry for not responding when you called and wrote and . . . I’m just sorry.”
She’d turned into a weepy mess. A weepy but suddenly so very liberated mess. “I actually wrote letters to Mary. For years, I wrote letters, things I’d tell her if I were her mother. But . . .” She stepped back. “But I realize now that I was writing them for me. She doesn’t need them. She has a mother.”
Dani’s eyelashes batted at her own tears.
“Moooom.”
The voice came from behind, and they both turned.
Mary wore a polka-dotted shirt and pink jeans with an elastic waistband . . . and a bike helmet, just like Dani had said.
“I cleaned. Do I get a snack? Can I have a popsicle?” She stuck her tiny fists on her waist. “Who’s that? Do you have to study tonight?”
Dani’s lips tipped into a smirk. “She’s talkative.”
“Clearly.” Same age as Charlie, but so different. Cute, though. Amelia crouched. “Hey, Mary. I’m Amelia. I . . . well, I’m your mom’s friend. I even helped pick out your name.”
“Do you want a popsicle?”
Dani laughed and reached for her daughter’s hand. “We might be able to offer her something a little more substantial.”
She watched mom and daughter walk down the hall in front of her.
“If you really want the dreams and desires in your heart to come into any kind of focus, maybe start by getting to know the one who gives us dreams in the first place.”
That was where she’d gone wrong, she knew now. And Logan was right. She’d chosen a hiding place over a home. Chosen to let her life widen rather than deepen. Not that there was anything wrong with the town and job and people and events that filled her days.
But they couldn’t take the place of old dreams . . . or the one who’d planted them in her heart.
Dani stopped at the end of the hallway. “You coming?”
She picked up her feet. “Coming.”
“You planning on wearing your helmet all night again, Mare, or—?”
Amelia froze, brain snagging on the word helmet.
“Oh my goodness.”
Dani looked back. “Amelia?”
Kendall Wilkins. Buried with an aviator’s helmet. That photo of Kendall and Harry, where Harry looked so much like Lindbergh, helmet and all.
Could it really be?
“You all right, Amelia?”
She blinked. “I might’ve just solved a five-year-old mystery.”
Except that wasn’t quite true. If what she was thinking was correct . . . well, try a nearly ninety-year-old mystery.