CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Present day…
Sarah was halfway across the park when a man and woman she didn’t know stopped her. “Are you the one bringing those condos into town?” the guy asked.
Her brain couldn’t compute his words, not when she was still lost in thoughts of her father. Her body couldn’t quite keep up either, and she stumbled to a halt as she said, “Excuse me?”
“You’re in charge of the condos, right?”
Stunned that someone was actually bringing this up—at her father’s commemoration of all places—it was all she could do just to nod.
“You’re going to have a fight on your hands, you know.”
She rubbed her hands over her eyes. “If this is about the carousel—”
“I don’t give a damn about the carousel.” The woman beside him looked deeply uncomfortable. “This place is meant to be forever wild.”
Sarah had spent enough time poring over building restrictions to know that he was talking about the meeting at which the fourteenth amendment to the New York Constitution, the Forever Wild clause, had been created. Concern for the importance of the watershed was one of the driving forces for creating the Adirondack Park.
Trying to get her brain to function again, she said, “I’m just as concerned about protecting the water sources as you are, and I can assure you that the proposed development will not in any way alter it.”
“You don’t live here anymore, do you?”
“No, but—”
“Then if you’ll excuse me for being perfectly frank, you are not anywhere near as concerned as I am.”
“I’m not an outsider,” she finally protested. “I grew up here, spent eighteen years of my life in Summer Lake. My mother is here. My grandmother is here. This is where I’m from.”
“Look, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m just trying to make you see what I see when I drive outside the Adirondack Park. More and more open space converted to developed land. New homes being built faster than people can occupy them while the old ones fall, neglected and rotting. Roads that shunt rainwater and snowmelt and pollution into streams at accelerated rates. I’m just saying you’re probably used to all that in the city. I don’t think you can see how important this is as clearly as someone who’s actually here can see it.”
Another time she might have taken out her phone and made notes. She would have scheduled a meeting to address this man’s concerns. But right now she was just too tired—and too full of a heart-deep sadness—to do anything more than say, “Okay.”
The man’s wife tugged on his arm. “George, this isn’t the time for this.” The woman lowered her voice. “They had the ceremony for her father today.”
The man grunted. “There will be a town meeting for this, won’t there?”
Sarah nodded. “Yes.” She had almost everything she needed to turn in the paperwork. “This coming Thursday.”
“We’ll see you there. And I sure hope you’ll have thought about what I said by then.”
Needing to get away from the couple, Sarah realized she was close to the carousel. Needing to hold on to something—anything—she climbed onto it.
The paint had mostly chipped off, giving way to large patches of bare metal and porcelain. The red-and-white awning was faded to pink and gray, and the whole thing rocked dangerously as she stepped on. As much as an inanimate object could project an emotion, it looked desolate, forlorn.
She hadn’t cried in the boathouse with Calvin. She hadn’t cried at the commemoration. But hearing that stranger point out all the ways she didn’t belong, all the ways she couldn’t possibly be a part of a town that had raised her, finally had tears of grief and loss spilling down her face.
Straddling one of the horses, she leaned her head against the pole that held it to the splitting ceiling boards above, her tears soaking the scarf her mother had made in her father’s memory.
* * *
It had been Calvin’s idea to build the new playground in James Bartow’s name. But watching Sarah stand in front of everyone—trying to be so brave, so strong, when she was only a heartbeat away from breaking as she gave her beautiful speech—had him wondering if he’d been wrong.
Lord knew he owed her father a great deal for his help in keeping Jordan from going to a foster home when she was a baby. But nothing was worth adding to Sarah’s grief, damn it. And when she had fled the festival, and he’d seen that couple corner her, he had to follow her, had to go to her. He was too late to intercept the man who had barged into his office earlier that day to demand answers about the condos. But by God, despite the words they’d thrown at each other in that boathouse on Loon Lake, whether he liked it or not, whether it was easy or not, Sarah was a part of his soul.
And she needed him.
He’d spent the past three days trying to wade through what had happened between them in the boathouse. Not only the mind-blowing kiss they’d shared, but what had been said.
When they were eighteen, they’d both screwed up. Badly. Did he wish they could have done things differently? Hell, yes. But they hadn’t. And while neither of them was blameless, neither was more to blame than the other.
In the end, he knew one thing for sure: Both of them had paid the price for their anger, for their pride in not wanting to admit fault, and for their stubborn desire to be the one to hear I’m sorry first. And the price had been high. Way too high.
Because he’d missed her like crazy for the past ten years.
And he didn’t want to miss her anymore.
Sarah didn’t look up when he approached. “Whatever you want to say to me about the carousel or anything else, can it wait? I just want to be alone.”
Calvin wasn’t surprised she tried to push him away. He’d be more surprised if she didn’t.
Climbing up onto the carousel, he lowered himself beside the horse she sat on. “I know it feels like that, but you need somebody right now. I know it doesn’t seem like it will get easier, but I swear it will.”
Finally, she looked at him, her cheek still pressed against the pole, her blue eyes glassy with tears. “When? When will it ever get better?”
With anyone else, he could have told the lie she needed to hear, but he couldn’t lie to Sarah anymore. Never again. “The truth is that it won’t ever go away completely.” Another sob rocked her—and the old wooden horse she was sitting on. “But it will fade, and you’ll wake up some mornings and actually be able to convince yourself that you’re okay.”
“But what if—” He had to get closer, had to practically press his ear to her mouth to hear the raw words. “What if I get too okay and forget him?” Pain clawed at each word. “What if I’m already forgetting the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed and how he used to drive me crazy humming ‘God Bless America’ all the time?” With each word, Sarah’s breath came out shakier, the words barely audible through her tears.
“Your father loves you, Sarah, and wherever you are, believe me, he knows how much you love him. You don’t have to mourn forever to prove that to him. Or to yourself. Your father wants to look down and see you smiling. Laughing. Forgetting.”
He was ready for her to say he was only making things worse. He was ready for her to tell him to go away. The only thing he wasn’t ready for was her whispering through her tears, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Not sure what she was asking him, he gently asked, “Tell you what?”
“How much you needed me. When your parents died.” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “I left you. I know I left you. But I swear I didn’t know what it felt like, not until he died. If I’d known, I would have been there for you.” Calvin reached out to wipe her tears away but he couldn’t keep up with them. “I would have been here for you. I swear I would have come back and stayed for you. Please believe me.” She was crying harder now, his strong Sarah no longer strong—and it was breaking the last part of his heart that hadn’t been broken out in the boathouse on Loon Lake. “I’m just so sorry for what happened. For what I did.”
“I know you are. And I’m sorry too. I wasn’t there for you either. Not when you needed me the most. Let me be here for you now.”
She shook her head, tears launching from her cheekbones and landing on his skin, searing him with her pain. “I don’t want to hurt you more than I already have, Calvin. I don’t ever want to hurt you again.”
“Come here.” He knew she needed someone to hold her. Knew she needed him to hold her. “Just a hug, I promise.”
And then she was in his arms, his chin on the top of her soft hair, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder as she cried, the wind taking the end of her scarf and wrapping it around him too.