But could you ever really leave behind the people you’d loved? June didn’t think so. The past was not a distant country, a spot to be marked on a map with a pushpin, a touch point for miles traveled. It was more of a continuum, a river. Even now, after all the terrible things Cal had done, for instance, after he was almost through serving time for vehicular manslaughter, June still sometimes remembered him as he’d been when she’d first met him: a young man with the strength of wood in his bones and paper in his blood. If she could go back, she asked herself again and again, would she make all the same choices once more? Would she have married Cal? Maybe, she realized. Probably she would.
But that didn’t mean she would do everything identically. When it came to her own culpability in the death of Mercy and the cover-up of the bus accident, June was still coming to terms with what she’d done and, worse, with what she hadn’t. Cal had insisted when Abel came for him that June knew nothing. When she’d tried to contradict him, he’d shot her a look and June had fallen silent, understanding that with a glance her husband had given her the only thing he could. Her marriage, it turned out, had been no more difficult to unravel than Suzie’s mitten. All it had taken was finding the right thread and giving it one hard yank.
She’d known immediately what she had to do—not just leave Titan Falls but leave it absolutely, unwinding herself all the way back to her beginning, past Cal, past her years at Smith, down to the bobbin. As tempted as she was to say that she couldn’t believe what she’d done to protect Cal and all the appearances she once thought mattered, as much as she wanted to plead that they were the actions of a different woman in a different lifetime, she knew that would be the worst crime of all.
And so she did the most painful thing she could think of. She went back. She rented a cottage just three doors down from the childhood wreck where she’d grown up and, purely by accident, lucked into a job at the library. Mrs. Tumbridge, the ancient librarian from June’s childhood, hadn’t cared that she didn’t have a degree in library science or any, for that matter. She was, it turned out, a Wellesley girl.
“What? How did I never know?” June asked.
“You were too hell-bent on getting out of here. You barely ever gave a fish time to fry. I know because once I used to be just like you.”
June colored. “Well, time is all I have now.”
Mrs. Tumbridge patted her hand. “I know that, too, dear.”
Every now and then, on an evening when the sky was bleeding out its most glorious sunset colors or during an afternoon thunderstorm, June would sit down and attempt to compose a letter to Nate.
“More than anything, I regret. If I could take it all back, I would. I know I did wrong.” Incomplete phrases, half sentences and false starts. None of them told the whole story, not even close. She always ended up crumpling the pages and throwing them out, telling herself she didn’t have Nate’s return address anyway. Sometimes she ran water over the words first to make the ink blur and encourage the stationery to break into flakes of pulp. After being married to a paper man for most of her adult life, June was only too aware that it was a substance that lent itself just as easily to outright lies as it did to the fiction she so loved. But how could you know which was which? It was the one question she should have been asking all along. Were stories a pack of lies disguised as veracity, or was it the other way around? Had all the things she’d told herself about Titan Falls over the years been the truth or just her version of it?
In answer, every Tuesday, she gathered the town children together at her feet and spun a tale full of wicked queens and noble princes who’d lost their power to fight and princesses trapped under sheets of river ice. She turned Mercy into an empress of winter, daubing her lips with frost and crowning her hair with icicles, and Hannah into a cherub of spring. Zeke was a hunter who could carve an animal out of wood and breathe life into it, and Hazel was a woman who could see both the past and the future alike. Far from being stuck in one, June had the ability to shape stories, she was beginning to realize. Once she had not thought much of that bequest. She had misused it and ignored it, denied it to herself, but now she was coming to comprehend that it meant absolutely everything. It was the only thing, really. She’d been given the gift of the last word. The very least she could do was make sure it was a good one.
Acknowledgments
The Androscoggin River is a waterway that tells a version of American history that I feel is in danger of being lost—a story of gumption, ingenuity, and technology, but also one of displacement, irresponsibility, and loss. In researching this book, I came across so many evocative photographs of old mills and learned so much about the passage of the Clean Water Act that I heartily recommend the curious to explore the subject. An excellent starting point is the Bethel Historical Society, which has an excellent Web page dedicated to the fascinating history of this region. Bates College students, in collaboration with the Androscoggin Land Trust, also put together a detailed regional timeline of the river broken into sections. Finally, Bowdoin College offers a fascinating “living history” page of the Androscoggin, complete with original documents about the paper industry and probing questions.
It takes a small village to put out a book. First thanks go to my lovely editor, Helen Atsma, for her good sense and divine ability to know what a story needs and for her calm faith and patience. And thanks to my agent, Dan Lazar, for being a mentor, an advocate, and a friend. I am so appreciative of the entire operation at Grand Central Publishing, from Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski and Kirsten Reach and the art department (who makes such gorgeous covers), and Maureen Sugden for copyediting, all the way up to Jamie Raab, who runs the whole place with impeccable style.
I owe a heap of thanks to all the people in my daily life who see me working at home in my pajamas, listen to me wail about deadlines and plotlines, and who are always standing at the ready with champagne when it’s all done: Pam, Andrea, Chantel, Lynn, Jack and Nancy, Lala, and Bella. Thank you to the whole Drever clan.
Thank you to Books, Inc., and to Book Passage for being so supportive of my novels over the years. A special thanks to Calvin Crosby for his wonderful humor and support, and to Elaine Petrocelli for creating a magical emporium packed with the best books, writers, and readers.
Finally, thanks to the people who make me who I am: Willow, Raine, Auden, and Ned. Here is another story for you.
About the Author
TIFFANY BAKER is the author of The Gilly Salt Sisters and The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, which was a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She holds an M.F.A. (creative writing) and a Ph.D. (Victorian literature) from UC Irvine and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and three children.
Also by Tiffany Baker
The Gilly Salt Sisters
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Tiffany Baker
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Tiffany Baker
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: January 2014
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