Can't Stop Loving You

by Janelle Taylor

  “A zillion times, back home.”

  “Oh,” he said, getting it as he pulled into the parking lot, past the misleadingly quaint building with its downhome, rocking-chair-lined porchlike entryway. “It’s a chain.”

  She looked amused. “You’ve never heard of Cracker Barrel?”

  “I live in Manhattan, remember? We’ve got delis, we’ve got five-star restaurants, we’ve got fast-food chains. We haven’t got Cracker Barrel.”

  “You’ll like it,” she said. “They’ve got meatloaf.”

  Her comment caught him off guard.

  She remembered.

  He only dared to look at her when he had pulled the car into a parking spot, and he saw that she was busy checking her reflection in the pull-down rearview mirror.

  “Meatloaf,” he echoed.

  She dragged her gaze up to his, then shrugged, but there was nothing nonchalant about her, hard as she tried. “I remembered that you like meatloaf. You do, right?”

  It wasn’t a real question. She knew the answer.

  They had talked about it one day, as they were lying in each other’s arms—about how he had always wanted the kind of family life where he came home and the house was clean and smelled delicious and his mother was waiting with a home-cooked meal, like meatloaf with gravy and mashed potatoes. His reality was that his mother always worked two jobs and was never there when he came home, and that most of his dinners, growing up, had come out of a can or box and been prepared by himself.

  And Mariel had kissed his neck and his cheek and promised him that someday, she would make him meatloaf and gravy and mashed potatoes. He had teased her about it from that point on, pretending, whenever he popped into her dorm room, that he was expecting a meatloaf dinner—until, of course, she was pregnant and there was no more teasing, ever.

  “I like meatloaf,” he agreed slowly, his eyes searching her face for some sign of the girl he had once cared for so deeply. He knew that she was there somewhere, kept finding himself tantalized by glimpses of the Mariel she had once been. The Mariel he had asked—and wanted—to spend the rest of his life with.

  Not the angry, bitter, frightened Mariel who had turned him down.

  “So,” he said, turning off the ignition. “Cracker Barrel.”

  “And then Robbie said, ‘Miss Rowan, Melvin’s fur looks kind of funny, and he’s been taking a really long nap,’ and I said, ‘How long?’ and he said, ‘Since last Tuesday.’ ” Mariel laughed as she remembered the little boy who had been one of her favorite students this year.

  Noah laughed, too. A true laugh. It was a sound she had heard repeatedly in the last half hour or so, as they sat across from each other in the big family-style restaurant and she entertained him with anecdotes about her students.

  “That’ll teach Robbie’s parents never to get him another pet,” Noah said, sipping root beer from the glass mug in front of him.

  “Oh, Melvin wasn’t a pet,” she said. “He was a caterpillar. Robbie has allergies, so that’s about as close to being a pet owner as he’s ever going to get. I helped him catch Melvin and put him into a jar, and Robbie fixed it up with leaves and twigs. He wanted to see Melvin turn into a beautiful butterfly. Instead, I helped him make a little coffin out of a matchbox, and we had a funeral.”

  “Poor Robbie,” Noah said, shaking his head and toying with his straw. “He was lucky to have a teacher like you.”

  “I was lucky to have a student like him. They all have their charming qualities, but he was one of my favorites this year.”

  “You really enjoy teaching,” he observed.

  “I really do,” she said, and she felt mildly surprised by her own admission. It wasn’t exactly news to her, but she rarely thought about her career when she wasn’t actually immersed in it—about how right it felt, despite the way she had fallen into it by default.

  “I never would have seen it coming if anyone had asked me way back when,” he said, resting his chin in his hand, watching her.

  She pretended to be very interested in finishing the last crumbs of corn bread on her plate, though she was absolutely stuffed. Noah had talked her into ordering a meal, too, and she had found herself chowing down on chicken and dumplings and sides of southern greens and fried apples.

  “I always assumed you would become an actress,” Noah went on, obviously unwilling to let it go.

  “Well, that was the plan.”

  “So what happened to change it?”

  “Gee, I guess the problem was that it’s really hard to get work as a stage star in Rockton,” she said wryly.

  “But you never wanted to live in Rockton. When you went back after…everything—I thought it was going to be temporary. For the summer. I thought you would resurface someplace else.”

  This was tricky, she thought, not wanting to look up from the last crumb of corn bread she was chasing around her plate with her fork. She had known that sooner or later they were going to get back onto the topic of the past—not even their past together, but the more recent past, apart. She wanted to know more about his life, and his marriage…

  Or did she?

  She shouldn’t feel threatened by the wife who was no longer his wife, she reminded herself.

  And she should expect that he would be just as curious about what she had been doing in the years since they had last seen each other. Which was why she had been regaling him with tales from the first grade front. It had been fun, really, telling him about her students, seeing him react with genuine interest. He wasn’t just being polite; he was really listening, really laughing, really caring.

  And now he was waiting intently for a response to his question about why she had settled in the hometown she had once hated.

  The truth was, she had settled there because it was safe, and it was as far away from him and Strasburg as she could get. There was no way, even with him safely back at Strasburg for his sophomore year, that she was going to reclaim her dream of living in New York City—not when it was where he had grown up, and where his mother lived, and where she had assumed he would someday return after college.

  And he had.

  Good thing she had played it safe.

  Then again, New York was a huge place. Big enough for both of them, if she had dared to take a chance. But the Mariel who had emerged from that traumatic freshman year hadn’t been game for anything. She had wanted only to retreat, to hide, to heal.

  And she had healed.

  “I decided that being an actress in New York wasn’t what I wanted after all,” she said.

  “But you wanted it so desperately when I knew you.”

  “You only knew me for a few months, Noah,” she pointed out.

  “And in those few months I didn’t get the sense that you were given to flights of fancy. You were strongwilled, Mariel. You were driven, and ambitious. You knew exactly what you wanted, and you were going to go after it. You used to say you wouldn’t go back to Rockton for anything ever again, unless it was Christmas, or you were on your way to be buried in the family plot.”

  “Wow, did I say that? I guess I always was a drama queen,” she said, trying to sound light. But the upbeat, casual mood of the conversation had been altered.

  She thought about her life as it was now, and she realized that although she wasn’t entirely content, her career and her location weren’t the elements in her life that were lacking. When you came right down to it, she liked living in Rockton, and she liked teaching.

  “Did you fall in love with somebody back home, Mariel? Is that why you stayed?” he asked, so unexpectedly that reaching for her coffee, she nearly knocked over her cup.

  “No!” she said immediately—then instantly wished that she hadn’t denied it.

  Maybe she should have made up something—given herself an imaginary fiancé back home. Then Noah would be sure to keep his hands off…

  What was she thinking?

  He had already promised to do just that, and so had she. There would be no more kissin
g or touching. They were here to find out what had happened to their daughter, period.

  She opened her mouth to steer the conversation back to Amber’s disappearance, but he was already talking.

  “There was never anyone, then?” he was asking her. “After me? You never fell in love again?”

  His words hung in the air between them, and she saw the look of dismay that crossed his face as soon as he realized what he had said.

  Love.

  They had never discussed love.

  They had never acknowledged that they were in love even when it was happening…if that was, indeed, what had happened.

  Had she been in love with him?

  She didn’t want to analyze that.

  Nor did she want him to assume.

  “I’ve never been in love, period,” she said in another unsuccessful attempt at levity. “So don’t flatter yourself, Lyons.”

  He recovered quickly; she had to give him that. He tilted his head to one side and looked at her, then grinned as he speared a green bean with his fork. “Oh, my wounded heart,” he said flippantly, adding to an imaginary audience, “And so, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the awkward portion of our conversation.”

  She smiled.

  “You want one of those mug sundaes you were talking about?” he asked, picking up the dessert menu the waiter had left.

  She groaned. “I can’t fit in another morsel, Noah.”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m having one.”

  “You are incredible,” she said, shaking her head.

  She didn’t mean it the way it came out. And she didn’t like the way his eyes warmed at her words, twinkling at her before he said, “Right back at ya, Rowan.”

  “We’re closing in five minutes,” the librarian said, coming up behind Noah.

  Startled by her voice, he looked up at her, and then at his watch.

  He couldn’t believe it. He had been sitting here at the microfiche machine in the Strasburg library for a full two hours. He glanced at Mariel, who was seated at a computer terminal a short distance away, copying notes off the screen.

  “I’ll wrap things up,” Noah told the librarian, who smiled, nodded, and moved on to give Mariel the same warning.

  Noah began to rewind the spool of microfiche in the machine, an expert at it now. Funny, but the librarian had had to teach him how to do it when he had first arrived tonight, even though he remembered using the library—and old newspapers on microfiche—to do research when he was a student here. It wasn’t difficult to spool the film onto the roller, but one needed a certain level of expertise to operate the scanner in a manner that would move the film along at just the right rate to search for articles that contained relevant information.

  In this case, he had searched back issues of every local and regional newspaper for articles about Amber Steadman.

  He had read everything he could find on the subject of her disappearance. He had written every possibly important detail in the black-and-white marble notebook he had bought when he and Mariel stopped at the Staples Office Supply superstore after eating at Cracker Barrel. Mariel had a similar notebook, and now he saw her snap it closed and shut down the computer.

  He replaced the microfilm into its canister, dropped it into the designated bin, and turned off the machine. He met Mariel by the exit doors just as the overhead lights were clicking off.

  “This is the second night I’ve closed down the Strasburg library,” Mariel said with a slight laugh as the librarian used her jangling key ring to let them out of the locked doors. A wall of muggy night air awaited them just beyond the air-conditioned library.

  “Did you find information we can use to investigate Amber’s disappearance?” Noah asked as they walked down the broad concrete steps of the modern building.

  She nodded, gesturing at the notebook tucked under her arm. “I’ve got the names of teachers and administrators at her school, and an enhanced street map of Valley Falls showing the route she would probably have walked when she left home that morning.”

  “And I’ve got the names of all of her friends and neighbors who were interviewed by reporters, plus the names of local places she probably frequented, like stores at the malls and fast-food restaurants. We can interview employees about her.”

  “Where do we start?” Mariel asked, pushing a wisp of hair from her already damp forehead.

  “I think her teachers would make the most sense. And her friends. We’ll make a short list and cover them in the morning,” Noah said as they walked across the broad, grassy quad. A chorus of cicadas created rhythmic background noise, and not a breath of breeze stirred the tree branches overhead.

  “We’re not going to start until morning?” she asked in dismay.

  “I don’t think we can show up on people’s doorsteps at night,” Noah pointed out.

  “I guess you’re right.”

  He wiped a trickle of sweat from his neck.

  They walked in silence for a few moments.

  “Too bad I decided not to stay at the Super 8 after all,” Mariel said. “At least they had a pool. I’d love to go swimming right about now.”

  “I know. I’m used to oppressive heat in the city, but up here it seems even more stifling, somehow,” Noah commented. “Although there was one spring, during finals—I think it was junior year—when we got a real heat wave. The frat house wasn’t air-conditioned—”

  “Frat house?” she echoed. “I didn’t know you joined a frat, Noah. You don’t seem like the type.”

  For a moment, he could focus only on the unaccustomed sound of his name on her lips. He used to love the way she said his name—the way her midwestern accent drew out the syllables, as opposed to hurried New Yorkers who rushed everything, including speech. Now he allowed himself a moment to savor it before responding to her comment.

  “You mean you never suspected I was a frat boy at heart, Mariel?”

  “I can’t quite picture you living in one of those rundown, dirty places.” She was referring to the row of ramshackle Victorians bedecked with Greek letters that lined Hudson Street not far from campus. The Phi Sig house had been the last one, perched on top of the hilly street, and it was known as the rowdiest of them all, with the best parties.

  “It wasn’t that dirty,” he said with a chuckle. “Not after we’d made the new pledges scour the whole place on their hands and knees. And we had a regular exterminator to take care of the mice and bugs.”

  She shuddered.

  He grinned. “I had a great time being a Phi Sig, Mariel. I’m still in touch with quite a few of my brothers. In fact, one of them, Danny, loaned me his car to drive up here.” And though she had offered to drive her rental, he had insisted on driving to Valley Falls today, for some reason wanting to be the one at the wheel.

  “I’m glad you have such good friends, Noah,” she said sincerely.

  “How about you? Do you have good friends back in Rockton?”

  She nodded. “I’ve actually known one of them, Katie Beth, since our preschool days. And then there’s my sister Leslie, and Jed.”

  “Jed?” A prickle of jealousy shot through him. She had said there was no one in her life, but…who was Jed? He pictured a rugged cowboy type and felt instantly inadequate in his polo shirt and shorts.

  “Jed is my sister’s fiancé. They’re getting married in a few weeks, and she’s probably panicking without me right about now. I’m sure my father has his hands full.”

  “What about your mother?”

  He saw a shadow cross her face. “She died,” she said simply.

  “I’m so sorry, Mariel.”

  “So am I.” She sighed. “It’s been almost two years, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be over it.”

  They had reached the campus gates that led back to Main Street. The Sweet Briar Inn was directly across from them, with soft lamplight spilling from the windows and guests in rocking chairs creaking on the wraparound porch.

  “You know, it’s still ea
rly,” Noah said suddenly, not wanting to call it a night just yet.

  “You just said it was late.” She sounded amused. He took that as an encouraging sign.

  “Too late for interrogating strangers. Not too late for a cold drink.” He gestured toward a small Mexican restaurant a few doors down from the inn. “What do you say?”

  “I don’t say no to a cold drink when it’s over ninety degrees after sundown, that’s for sure,” she said.

  They headed in that direction and a minute or two later were seated across from each other at a table for two. The place was small and not air-conditioned, with terra-cotta tile and shimmering candles, and fairly deserted. A ceiling fan whirred overhead, and another floor fan stirred the air nearby, but did little to cool things off. There was a sign on the wall above the bar advertising live mariachi musicians on Saturday nights.

  A smiling Hispanic waiter appeared, set down a basket of chips and a crock of salsa, and asked if they wanted to see a menu.

  Noah looked at Mariel, who shook her head. “I’m still stuffed from Cracker Barrel this afternoon.”

  “Me, too. We’ll just have drinks,” he told the waiter, who stood with his pen poised, waiting for Mariel’s order.

  “I’ll have an iced tea,” she said, then changed her mind. “Wait a minute, I’d better not have more caffeine at this hour. I need to get a good night’s sleep for a change. Do you have anything decaf?”

  The waiter grinned. “No caffeine in a Margarita.”

  “That’s what I’m having,” Noah decided. “Frozen. No salt.”

  Mariel hesitated, then threw up her hands. “Okay, count me in on that. But with salt.”

  “Coming right up.”

  The waiter disappeared into the kitchen.

  They crunched their chips and talked about Mexican food, then about television cooking shows, then about movies.

  When their drinks arrived, Noah lifted his glass and said, for lack of anything profound, “Here’s to a cold drink on a hot night.”

  She clinked her glass against his.

  Noah swallowed some of the citrusy slush, savoring the chilling sensation on his tongue. He could taste the tequila, which meant he had better not toss this back as though it were ice water. But it was hard not to in this heat, especially after such a trying twenty-four hours.