Confessions of a Small-Town Girl

by Christine Flynn

  It also seemed imperative that he not realize how big a hole that knowledge ripped in her heart.

  “You didn’t have to do all this. Make all these arrangements, I mean.” She kept her voice low, forcing calm over the swift and sudden ache. “And you didn’t have to take Ernie away from his family to get all this done today.”

  His guilty glance skimmed her face.

  “Yes, I did. I know how important it is that you get moved in here. You have the basics now. Except for your hot plate,” he said, wincing when he remembered. “I forgot that.”

  She had thought she would borrow his stove. To cook for them both.

  The thought deepened the ache, made her more desperate to know what had gone wrong. She held that desperation in check, masked it beneath the calm she clung to just as urgently. “Did you get a call to go back to New York?’

  Sam could have told her he had. He could have said that something had come up and that they needed him back at the precinct as soon as he could get there. Such an explanation would have taken the onus of the decision off of him and left her with someone else to blame for his walking out on her before they’d planned. But even if he hadn’t always accepted responsibility for his actions, there was no way he could lie to her. If he owed her anything, it was the truth.

  “No one called me.” He spoke the admission quietly, hating the hurt she couldn’t hide in her eyes, hating that he’d put it there. “I asked my boss if I could come back early. He told me to come in and we’d talk about it.”

  Anyone else would have asked why he had done that. The lovely woman turning from him didn’t seem to think an explanation was necessary.

  “Please tell Ernie I’ll pay him for today.”

  “Kelsey. Don’t,” he said, catching her by the arm when she turned away.

  Beneath his hand, he felt her muscles stiffen. She might not want to hear it, but he needed to explain, anyway.

  Since she refused to turn back, he stepped in front of her. “You know I never intended to stay here.”

  “I never said I thought you would.”

  She didn’t want the defense she heard in her voice. She didn’t want the hurt she felt, either, but there didn’t seem to be a whole lot she could do about that at the moment. It was her own fault it was there. All the time he’d encouraged her, worked with her, helped her, her old dreams had slowly crept back. She’d known all along that those dreams were impossible. She’d known he would want no part of them. But that hadn’t stopped her from longing for them, anyway. And she’d wanted them all. Everything she’d dreamed of all those years ago. Him. His children.

  She would never be able to live in the moment. There was too much about what a person did with each second that affected the future.

  “I never said I expected anything from you,” she reminded him, easing from his grip. “So please don’t make it sound as if I said or did something that pushed you into leaving.”

  “It wasn’t you.” Her withdrawal had him withdrawing himself. “I went to see your mother yesterday. I wanted her to understand that you know what you’re doing here,” he told her before she could ask why he would do such a thing. “And I wanted her to stop telling everyone that I talked you into buying this place.”

  Disbelief robbed the strength from her voice. “You talked to my mother?”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Basically, that I’d be doing you a favor to get out of here.”

  The tension taunting his muscles demanded that he move. Kneading the cords knotted in his neck, he headed for the bathroom to load up the tools he and Ernie had used. They were his uncle’s, but he’d leave them for Ernie to use later when he installed her kitchen sink.

  Kelsey was right behind him.

  “You’re leaving because of my mother?”

  “I’m leaving because I was going to anyway. And because she’s right,” he admitted, crouching to swipe up a couple of wrenches. They landed in the toolbox with a rattle and a clank. “If I stay, I won’t want to keep my hands off of you,” he told her bluntly. “I don’t care how careful we think we are, someone around here is going to figure out what’s going on and the talk will escalate.” He snapped the box, carried it in to where he’d left the sawhorses in her unfinished living room and headed for the bedroom to pick up carpet scraps.

  He suddenly stopped, turning in the doorway. As he did, something protective moved into his eyes, entered his tone. “You’re reestablishing yourself here, Kelsey. You’re starting a new business. You don’t want everyone around here talking about how you had an affair with some guy who talked you into moving back here then abandoned you. It won’t matter that you and I know that’s not what happened. That’s what they’ll say. You know that as well as I do.”

  His tension snaked toward her, wrapping around her, fed her own.

  She couldn’t deny his conclusions. She couldn’t believe how blinded she’d been by her feelings for him, either. She hadn’t considered consequences at all.

  She wasn’t ready for this, Kelsey thought, hugging her arms more tightly. She wasn’t prepared. She felt robbed, cheated of the time they would have had together. But as much as she wanted to blame her mother for what he was doing now, in her heart she knew he wasn’t doing what he wouldn’t do a few weeks from now, anyway.

  He might have made it sound as if he were leaving to protect her, but he was leaving to protect himself, too. She knew how he felt about commitment. She knew how he’d shut down the parts of himself she wanted most. As he quietly studied her face, she had the feeling he also knew how she’d come to feel about him. Heaven knew she’d done a lousy job of hiding it. And that, more than anything, had hastened his need to leave.

  “I’ll clean that up,” she said, nodding to the scraps in her newly completed bedroom. If he thought he should leave, then by all means, he should. “It might be best if you go now.”

  The dark slashes of his eyebrows pinched. “Hey,” he murmured. Looking torn, clearly struggling, he lifted his hand toward her face. “Don’t do that. Okay?”

  It was not okay. Her sense of self-protection finally, belatedly, asserting itself, she stepped back. He couldn’t have it both ways. He couldn’t push her away with one hand and reach for her with another.

  “Be careful out there. Okay, Sam? I know you don’t like to hear it, but there are people who care about you.”

  “Kelsey…”

  “Call your sister once in a while, too. One of these days, you might even realize that you need her and her boys even more than they need you.

  “I’m going to work downstairs for a while,” she concluded softly. “I appreciate all your work here, Sam. I really do. And all your support, and your encouragement and I just…need to go.”

  Still hugging her arms around herself, she turned and headed out the open door with the warm breeze blowing after her. She didn’t slow. She didn’t look back.

  For a moment, Sam heard nothing but the light and hurried sounds of her sneakers on the steps and the distant honk of Mrs. Farber’s geese. All he felt was the guilt that had brought him there, and a strange and unfamiliar ache behind his breastbone.

  He hated that she’d run from him. He hated that they’d had to end so abruptly. He knew he had no finesse, and he hated that, too, but he’d known no pretty way to tell her things would only get more complicated if he stayed. He knew only that clean breaks healed the fastest, and that there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that leaving was the best thing he could offer her.

  He waited until she’d had time to get inside downstairs before he jogged down the steps himself and climbed into his truck. He didn’t look back, either. He never did. He would do nothing but load up his things, arrange to have the trailer picked up, and head for the city in the morning. He needed to get back to work. Once he did, he felt certain the demands of his job would make him forget all about the unfamiliar void that had just opened in his chest.
r />   Chapter Eleven

  Imagination. It had gotten her where she was, Kelsey thought. It would get her where she needed to go.

  Standing beside the furniture and boxes she’d stored at the end of the large and open mill room, she closed her eyes and tried to use that intrepid imagination to envision the work space as it would be. New walls, painted white. New floor, industrial gray rubber. Tables for packaging, stainless steel so they could be sanitized. A boxing and storage area separate from the grinding and packaging area to avoid contamination. She had government safety rules to follow that hadn’t been in effect a century and a half ago.

  When she opened her eyes, she groaned. It would take her another century and a half to make it all happen.

  In the month since she’d returned to Maple Mountain, she had discovered two hard and fast rules about remodeling, renovating and starting a business. Everything cost twice as much as planned and took twice as long to accomplish.

  The good news was that she had all winter to get the mill up and running. The better news, as far as she was concerned at the moment, was that she’d figured out how to raise and lower the one ton top millstone from the equally heavy bottom one to change the grind of grain from course to flour fine. She had no hopper to pour the grain into the hole in the middle of the top stone, though, and she still had to replace the belts to the waterwheel outside that would slowly turn the stones with the grooves that would carry the ground meal to the discharge spout. She needed to have that fabricated, too, but Sam had said that would be the simplest part of the whole project.

  Sam.

  There wasn’t a day gone by that he didn’t creep into her thoughts, or an hour that she didn’t miss him, wish she’d never laid eyes on him and felt enormously grateful to him for her mill.

  He’d been gone three weeks, two days and about an hour. Not that she was counting.

  “I’m leavin’ now,” Ernie called from the other side of the large and open door. “Want me to carry some of that wood upstairs before I go?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” she called back, turning from the cartons she’d come to search for the box of sweaters she’d packed. It was nearing the middle of September and she needed her warmer clothes.

  Reaching the open door, she saw him stop by his faded red truck. “But thank you,” she continued. “Does the stove work now?”

  He pushed back the brim of his cap. “Yup.”

  “And the sink?”

  “That, too,” he added, downright talkative today.

  “Thank you so much, Ernie.” She’d had the appliances and the kitchen sink for weeks. Ernie just hadn’t had time to install them until now. “Can I pay you tomorrow? I need to go into St. Johnsbury to the bank,” she told him, and to the warehouse store, she thought. Her kitchen cabinet doors had come in just as Sam had said they would.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t go a day without thinking about him. She couldn’t even go five minutes.

  With a mental sigh, wondering how she would ever get over him if she couldn’t get him off her mind, she smiled at the man lifting his hand toward her. Telling her tomorrow was fine, he said goodbye by tipping his hat and climbed into his truck.

  She could hear him pulling out of the drive even as she returned to her search. As soon as she found the box, she would carry it upstairs, then take up some of the firewood Charlie had brought that morning. The skies were a clear, sharp blue, but the air had turned crisp and cold almost overnight. The maples had even started to turn.

  She could use more blankets, too.

  She’d just found the first box she was looking for when she noticed the rumble of a truck growing louder rather than retreating. Wondering what Ernie had forgotten, she dragged the large cardboard carton up and over the top of a half dozen others and turned with her arms wrapped around it.

  She’d made it to the doorway when she realized it wasn’t Ernie at all.

  Bending slowly, her heart bumping her ribs, she set the awkward carton at her feet.

  From behind the wheel of his truck, Sam watched Kelsey straighten in the last of the day’s sunshine. Her pale hair was clipped low at her nape, but strands had worked themselves free. She nudged them back, only to immediately snake her arms around the loose top of her gray sweats.

  The guardedness in her stance was equally evident in her expression when he killed the engine and climbed out.

  He had walked into stings that didn’t have his nerves feeling as tight as they did just then. He couldn’t quite believe what he was doing. But, then, he couldn’t quite believe what he’d already done.

  He moved toward her, his hands in his pockets, his gait easy despite the trip-wire tension flowing through his veins. “Hi,” he said, stopping in front of her to slowly scan the caution in her pretty face.

  “Hi,” Kelsey replied. She swallowed. Hard. The slate-gray sweater he wore made his shoulders look huge and turned the silver in his unreadable eyes to pewter. He looked as big and compelling as he always had to her. But he also looked a little uncertain as he tried to gauge her reaction to his presence. And that didn’t seem like him at all.

  “Did you come to see Megan and the boys?”

  “I’ll go over later. I wanted to see you first,” he admitted, still working on finesse, still not sure he had a handle on it. “And your mom.”

  “My mom?”

  “Actually, I’ve already talked to her.” As meetings went, the second had gone considerably better than the first. He didn’t think he’d redeemed himself completely in Dora’s eyes, but he had the feeling there was hope—depending on how receptive her daughter was to what he had to say.

  “Why would you want to talk to my mother?”

  At a loss, Kelsey studied the strange hesitation in the handsome lines of his face. She and her mom had finally come to an understanding of sorts. Her mother still thought she’d traded her best opportunities to become a slave to a mill, but she had come to realize that Kelsey always had been happiest when she was home, and that Sam had simply given her the courage to return to where she needed to be.

  That she be happy was all her mom really wanted for her.

  “Because I want her to know my intentions are honorable.”

  Aware of her sudden confusion, more aware of his sudden need to move, he nodded toward the box at her feet. “Where are you going with that?”

  “Upstairs.” Her confusion remained firmly in place as she shook her head. “What intentions?”

  He stepped toward the carton. “Do you have anything else you want taken up?”

  Still hugging herself, Kelsey blocked his path. She had spent every single one of the past twenty-three nights wondering when the emptiness she felt without him would begin to ease. She’d spent those same nights wondering how long she could bear to put off asking his sister if she’d heard from him, if he was safe, if he was even still alive. Thoughts of where he could be and what sort of danger he might have put himself into had left her tossing and turning as much as missing him had. He wasn’t going to show up out of nowhere, totally undo what little emotional progress she’d made, and just start moving boxes.

  “I don’t need you to carry anything, Sam.” An unwanted bubble of hope bumped into the potential for fresh hurt. Having recently mastered the ability to protect herself, she needed to keep that hope in check. His return could mean anything. He could have been told to take more time. He could have returned to help his uncle or his sister and because he would be around, he’d wanted her mother to know he had no designs on her. He could have come to tell her that himself. “I just need to know what you want.”

  Sam pushed his hands back into his pockets. The temptation to reach for her was strong. But he had no desire to have her pull away from him. He wasn’t going to push. He wouldn’t rush her. He would give her whatever time and space she needed, and pray that he wasn’t too late.

  He stepped back, his jaw working.

  “Do you still believe in your dream for this place?�
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  Her brow furrowed at the unexpected question. “More than ever,” she replied. “Why?”

  “Because I do, too.” It seemed safest to start with the practical side. More comfortable, anyway. “Could you use an investor?”

  “You want to invest in the mill?”

  “I haven’t had much to spend my money on the last few years.” The last ten, to be exact, he thought, starting to pace. “So I have a hundred thousand or so I could contribute. And you still need muscle around here,” he noted, glancing through the open doorway to the broken casing around the millstone. “I’m good for the labor.”

  “You want to work here?”

  His glance lifted to the new windows he’d installed before he’d left. With the setting sun now half hidden by the treetops and reflecting like fire off the sparkling panes, he couldn’t tell whether or not she’d hung curtains.

  “That, too,” he replied, but let the rest of his thought go. Telling her he also wanted to live here would definitely be getting ahead of himself.

  Restive, he glanced back at her, kept pacing.

  “They put you on leave again,” she concluded.

  “Actually, I quit.”

  For the first time since he’d arrived, her caution slipped. “But you love what you do.”

  “I used to,” he agreed, relieved by the sudden concern in her eyes. “There was a time I honestly couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But I have no business going undercover anymore. I’m not safe. And I have no desire to jeopardize someone else because my head’s not in what I’m doing.”

  “What happened?”

  At her unmasked concern, he stopped six feet in front of her.

  The last time he’d seen her, he’d been dead certain his work would make the void that had opened up inside him go away. Instead the void had affected his work in ways he would never have thought possible.

  He’d been two days into his new assignment when he’d found himself distracted by thoughts of her clearing birds’ nests from the high rafters of the mill room. Worrying about her falling, he’d missed the suspect he’d been waiting to spot and two days of surveillance had gone down the tubes.