“All right.” He knew when he was defeated. “I’ll see if I can fit it in.”
“Thank you. Oh, and leave the door open just a crack, would you? Housekeeping should be on their way up sometime soon …”
Ford did as she requested, leaving the door to the family quarters slightly open, then went back to his room for his running shoes. He was getting soft sitting around, with no exercise other than paddling the kayak every couple of days, and he needed to move. He tied on the shoes and went down the back steps to the door used by staff to come and go through the kitchen, then started out on his run.
St. Dennis was a quiet town most mornings, but Sunday mornings were pretty much dead, even in the summer. The churches were full, and the restaurants that served breakfast or brunch were gearing up for the crowds that would show up later in the morning. It was the perfect time for a run, not too hot yet, the breeze was just right, and he didn’t have to share the roadway with many others.
He started out on Charles Street, but without planning to, he found himself making the right onto Cherry and running the one block to Hudson. His feet slowed as he passed Carly’s house, but the shades were still drawn on the side of the house that took the early-morning sun. At some point, he’d have to pick up that jacket he’d left in her dining room last night, but it wouldn’t be now.
Was she sleeping in, he wondered, or had she gotten up early to work?
Had she lain awake last night as long as he had, wondering where, if anyplace, they were headed? Had she wished he’d stayed?
There was no question of where they could have ended up if he hadn’t put the lid on it, a move that had come at considerable personal sacrifice. There’d been nothing he wanted more than to take her to bed. There was no denying that she brought him to the boiling point, but at the same time, he had to recognize certain basic facts. Carly was a forever woman, if, of course, you were looking for such a woman, which he was not.
The problem wasn’t that she could take him from zero to sixty faster than just about any woman he’d ever met. The problem was that the more time he spent with her, the more he really liked her. What would he do with a woman like that at this point in his life, when he didn’t know where he was headed or what his next move would be? It disturbed him that he’d passed his thirtieth birthday without having a clue about who or what he wanted to be for the rest of his life. He’d been a soldier for so long—a highly specialized one, to be sure, but a soldier all the same. The skills he’d been taught, the areas in which he excelled, were hardly translatable to the real world in which his family lived, in which Carly lived.
He supposed he could go into law enforcement like some of his friends had done. He’d heard that Beck was looking to add to the police force, but that didn’t seem like a good fit to him. Dan would jump at the chance to bring him on board at the inn, but he’d already thought that through and dismissed it. He had no desire to run the inn, especially since Dan was so good at it, and Ford didn’t have a clue. It was good that someone in the family shared their father’s love for the old place, though. He appreciated the sense of history there, felt the presence of his ancestors in every one of the rooms. There was something about being part of an unbroken chain that went back so many generations in this town that made you feel grounded, whether or not you wanted to be. In the past, he hadn’t felt the pull quite as much as he did this time around. Of course, he hadn’t been home in a long time, and maybe being a little older he might be more aware of such things.
His feet took him all the way to the end of Hudson, where it dead-ended on Old St. Mary’s Church Road. The carriage house on the Enright property was closed and still, the workmen—and Carly—gone for the weekend, the driveway empty of the cars and pickups that filled it every weekday. He jogged past the house, the mansion that old Curtis had signed over to the town, and kept going until he reached the town square. He stopped for a moment, recalling holidays that had been celebrated there: First Families’ Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day. Halloween parades that had wound through the center of town and ended right here, where prizes for best costume had been given out and photos taken of the winners for the front page of the St. Dennis Gazette. He recalled one year when his mother had dressed the three of them as cowboys in matching outfits, and how Lucy had squawked at having to wear chaps like her brothers and a hat that made her hair go flat on top.
Their grandfather had been alive then, and had taken their picture in front of an old live oak that stood behind the library. Ford walked around the building to see if the tree was still there, and found himself surprisingly disappointed when he realized it had been taken down. He wondered what had happened to that photo.
He resumed jogging, and went straight back onto Charles Street and turned right. He ran past houses he’d known well when he was a child, houses where friends had lived, and he wondered what had happened to them all, where they were now. His best buddy through eighth grade, John-Luc, had lived in the gray clapboard house on the corner—it had been white back then—and Amy Weathers, the class brain, had lived next door. The last time Ford came home, his mother mentioned pointedly and on several occasions that Amy and John-Luc had married, had two children, and were living happily over on Fifth Street in the house they bought from the estate of Mr. Davis, who at one time or another had taught piano to just about every kid in St. Dennis.
There was that chain again. So many people who lived in St. Dennis had families that went back several generations, so your parents knew theirs. Their grandparents had danced at your grandparents’ wedding. Their family albums held photos of some of the people you were descended from, and yours held theirs. It wasn’t something he thought about while he was away, but now that he was here, steeped in it all, he realized he was finding comfort in his own history, and that of his family.
Farther out on Charles Street, the shoulder became more narrow, and the houses farther and farther apart. Up around the big bend was the Madison farm, where Lucy lived with her husband, where they’d raised their family. He felt a stab of something that took him a moment to recognize as envy, which made no sense to him at all.
He crossed the road and took a left onto River Road and ran past Blossoms, where he’d had lunch with Carly, and past the old warehouses that Dallas MacGregor had bought and turned into a film studio. Well below the studio, the lanes narrowed again and the properties were larger and more stately. He ran past several large Victorian homes, the largest of which belonged to Dallas’s great-aunt Berry Eberle, known on the silver screen as Beryl Townsend, who was as colorful a character as any she’d played in films. Still he ran, back toward the center of town, past St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and the First Baptist of St. Dennis, where cars overflowed the parking lots on this Sunday morning. His route took him past the cafés and the shops, past the building that had once belonged to his grandfather, the building that housed the Gazette. There was a light burning on the second floor, and Ford paused before crossing the street. The first-floor door on the side of the building was open, so he trotted up the steps, wondering who had forgotten to turn off the lights and lock the door.
“Hello?” he called from the top of the steps.
There was a shuffling noise coming from the hall, and he rounded the corner to find Ray Shelton, the production manager, coming out of his office.
“Oh, Ford.” The older man smiled with relief. “I couldn’t imagine who … and then I realized I’d left the door … but come in, come in.” He gestured for Ford to follow him. “Have a seat there. Just put those things on the floor …”