The Bridge Page 6

  “I was wrong.” He took a step back. With everything in him he forced himself not to think about how she had felt in his arms the night before. “We made a mistake, Molly. We’re friends. Let’s not let last night change that.”

  She looked like she might argue with him, but then she must’ve remembered Preston. A resignation came over her, and when she spoke again, he could see in her eyes walls around her heart that hadn’t been there before. “You’re right.” Her smile looked forced. “I’m sorry, too.” She shrugged. “Just one of those things, I guess.”

  Their study time went late, as usual. But nothing between them was ever the same again. Every time he saw her after that, he could only think of her conversation with Preston and the fact that when the semester ended, she was headed back. He felt like a blind fool. He must’ve been crazy to think he could win her heart or that she would walk away from her family for him. No matter what he wanted to believe, she was going home.

  As the final days of the semester flew by, he and Molly found a way back to their friendship. He never told her about her father’s phone call, never asked why she would promise her love to Preston that afternoon and then hours later lead Ryan to believe they were sharing the most wonderful night together. And he never asked her about their kiss, even though the questions plagued him every day. Hadn’t they both felt the connection? Felt it to the core of their beings? How could she be so heartless, so conflicted? Every time he asked himself, the answers were the same. Which was why he never brought the matter up to Molly, even when he was tempted to ask. Clearly, she wasn’t conflicted at all. She had pulled away from him after that night for one reason.

  She was in love with Preston.

  The memories lifted and Ryan stepped away from the window, from the snow falling outside. He needed to make calls, needed to check on the studio position. He wasn’t ready to give up his dream. Not yet. Not the way Molly had given up when she left Belmont early that summer. Ryan hesitated and touched the copy of Jane Eyre as he passed by. He grabbed the keys to his truck and a heavy coat from the closet. Along the way, a thought occurred to him.

  Of course he never said anything to Molly about her dad’s phone call—not only because of Molly’s taped conversation. But because she’d given up on the two of them so easily.

  Three weeks later, when she announced she was headed back to San Francisco, there was no surprise, nothing he could say, no real argument or debate. They finished the semester and took their finals, and she bought them matching copies of Jane Eyre. Then she was gone. Leaving him with the one thought he couldn’t get out of his mind. Her father might’ve been right about Molly’s feelings for Preston. But if Molly truly believed Ryan wasn’t good enough, the sad truth was this: He had never known Molly Allen at all.

  As on most Saturdays, Molly woke up just after six and climbed into her Nike running sweats, pale pink and tight enough to keep out the cold on chilly November mornings like this. She had a routine that took her down Twenty-third to Everett, up the hill to the right, and through several smaller residential streets back to her apartment. The route was four miles, long enough to stir her heart and clear her head.

  At least on most Saturdays.

  Today, as she set out, last night’s video played in her soul, the unanswered questions hanging from the rafters of long ago. There had never been anyone like Ryan, and Molly fully expected there never would be. How had everything fallen apart? What could have caused him to change so quickly?

  There had been so much she wanted to say to him before she returned home. But in the end, the only thing she had done was ask him to kiss her. One kiss. She jogged down her front steps and made the turn onto Twenty-third, the wind biting against her cheeks. The cold didn’t matter. All she could feel were his warm hands on her face, the strength of his arms. The way she’d felt safe and loved and whole for those few minutes.

  This many years later, that single kiss, those stolen moments in the backyard of her parents’ Brentwood house, were the most romantic of her life. Her whole life. In his embrace, she felt herself falling, changing, finding the strength to stand up to her father. She had meant what she’d said to Ryan Kelly that night. All she needed was a reason—and he was her reason.

  She was sure of that back then.

  Even after they’d been caught, her only fear was her father, whether he’d find out and buy her a ticket home. Either the staff never saw the two of them kissing in the backyard or they never contacted her dad, because nothing was ever said. She didn’t talk to her dad until a few weeks later, and by then she had her answer. She was going back home. Not because of his demands but because Ryan had changed his mind.

  She knew something was wrong the moment he picked her up for school the next morning. Molly had planned out the moment. In her dreams, he would jump out and open the door for her—same as always—but when they were inside, he would draw her to him once more, and the kiss that had been cut short the night before would continue. It would continue and it would never end. Not ever.

  Instead, Ryan was distant and cool. He opened her door, but he seemed careful not to let their arms brush. On the drive to Belmont, he said very little, talking only about the test he had that day in music theory and how he needed to buckle down and study more for his history class.

  By this time Molly began to feel sick. It was almost as if someone had come in the still of the night and kidnapped the Ryan she had known, the best friend of two years who had made her believe he was falling for her. As if he had been replaced with someone who looked like him and dressed like him and smelled like him. Someone who drove his truck and attended his classes.

  After that, the Ryan Kelly she knew no longer existed.

  All day she worked up the courage to talk to him, to ask him what was wrong and demand that he be honest. But when they reached The Bridge a few hours later, he spoke before she had the chance. In a few rushed sentences, he apologized for the night before, calling it a mistake. He told her she had her life back home and he had his. She remembered wanting to scream at him or cry out or shake him. How many times had she told him she wasn’t in love with Preston? Or that her dreams had nothing to do with running her father’s corporation?

  He was adamant, and in under a minute, the pieces came together. It wasn’t her life back home that had caused him to rethink their night together, their kiss.

  It was his.

  He must have realized that in the end he would go back to Carthage and that he wasn’t ready to break up with the girl waiting for him. He was still in love with her. That must have been the conclusion he had reached overnight, and now he could do nothing but apologize.

  Molly shuddered, sickened by the thought as much now as she had been then. Could there be anything worse? The guy she’d spent two years with, so regretting kissing her that he had to apologize? In the same minute it had taken Molly to understand the reasons Ryan was sorry, she had known something else. She would never let him see her crumble. She wouldn’t beg him or question him or convince him he was wrong. If he wouldn’t let go of his past, she would do the only thing she had left.

  She would go back home without him.

  She told Ryan good-bye without tears, before she might’ve fallen apart. Between that and knowing with all certainty that she’d never see him again, Molly found a strength she hadn’t thought herself capable of. It allowed her to go home and face her parents—something she hadn’t been sure she could do.

  The conversation with her father was short and to the point.

  Her dad picked her up at the airport, and before they had her bags in the hired Town Car, he was telling her about meetings for the following day and the method of grooming and why it was important that she spend time watching him work so she’d know what was waiting for her ten years down the road.

  Molly let him talk until they reached their gated home in Pacific Heights. When the driver let them out, she faced her father. “Stop.”

  “. . . which is why we ha
ve two meetings tomorrow afternoon, the first with . . .” Her father blinked and seemed to register what she’d said. “Stop?”

  “Yes.” Her heart raced, but there was no turning back. “Here’s how it will be. You need to know, because this is the last time I’m going to tell you.”

  He was quiet for the first time since Molly could remember.

  “Okay.” She smiled to cover up the fact that she was shaking. “I’m not ever going to be CEO of your corporation. But I have a deal for you.”

  Her dad looked like he might yell or fly into a dissertation about how she wasn’t being rational. But again he remained silent.

  “I’ll run the charitable branch of your business. We’ll help all kinds of people and make a difference in our community. But I will not now nor ever sit at the head of your board.”

  “You’re saying . . . you want Preston to have the job?”

  Molly knew what her dad was thinking. If she and Preston married, what difference did it make who was running the company? The business would still be in family hands. She made a hurried decision not to drop that bombshell at the same time. “Okay, yes. That’s what I’m saying. I want Preston to run it.”

  He made a face. “And you’ll run the charitable foundation?” He looked baffled, as if she might be certifiably insane to walk away from such an opportunity. “I don’t have a charitable foundation.”

  She smiled at him again. “Exactly.” Before her father could say another word, she turned around and grabbed two of her bags. “I’ll meet you in the house.”

  That was that. He tried again later that day and the next and three times a week from then out. Molly held her ground.

  Her conversation with Preston Millington was equally brief.

  They grabbed coffee on the waterfront the next day, and from the moment he picked her up, she could do nothing but compare him to Ryan. He wasn’t funny, and he didn’t make her heart beat faster when they were together. He smelled nice, but the whole drive, he asked only a couple of questions about her. Otherwise, he was content to talk about his education, the near completion of his MBA, and his dreams for her father’s corporation. He was fit and incredibly handsome, much more mature than his twenty-four years. He wore business pants and a starched white button-down, probably what her father had worn at his age. Most of that day she felt like she was talking to a one-dimensional model, fresh off the pages of GQ magazine.

  Very quickly, she laid out the situation. “I know we had plans at one point.” She took his hands in hers. “That was a long time ago. I’ve changed, Preston. I don’t see you that way.”

  Preston opened his mouth as if he might refute her, but he hesitated for a long time. “Well.” He sounded dazed. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “You’ll be okay, right?” Molly gave him a weak smile. “I mean, we’ve barely talked for two years. I sort of thought you’d probably moved on.”

  “No.” It was the most thoughtful Preston had looked the whole time Molly had known him. “A guy could never just . . . move on from you, Molly.”

  “Thanks.” She wanted to tell him he was wrong. Because Ryan was already moving on from her. He would marry his Southern belle and Molly would find her place in his past, a distant memory. This wasn’t the time. “We’ll be friends?”

  Again he waited, but a broken smile tugged at his lips, and he shrugged. “I guess so.” He exhaled in a rush. “The truth is, I’m too busy to date.”

  “Exactly.” Molly flipped her blond hair over her shoulder. “That’s what I mean. It just isn’t right. You know, between us.”

  She convinced him with little effort, and six months later, Preston and her father helped unveil the Allen Foundation, a charity that initially brought music to orphaned children and eventually expanded to include the shelter for abandoned animals. From the first day of its existence, Molly threw herself into the foundation. The work had a healing effect on her soul. Somehow, when she was teaching a forgotten third-grader how to play the violin, she could keep from spending every waking hour wondering about her dream of the philharmonic and her thoughts about Ryan, the way she still longed for him. The way she hated him for rejecting her.

  Every now and then she went to the Christian church down the street. She hoped the key to restoration lay somewhere between the altar and the doors. The pastor talked about hope and redemption and God, the giver of second chances. Though she liked the peace she felt there, in the end she walked out of the service missing Ryan.

  She believed the message. Only God could have given her a second chance with Ryan Kelly.

  Three years later, with her father still harping on her to take the reins of the business, a heart attack caught up with him at a gaming table in Las Vegas. A year after they buried him, her mother died after a quick fight with cancer, and Molly couldn’t get out of San Francisco fast enough.

  Preston took over her father’s business, and Molly moved the Allen Foundation to Portland. She began playing violin for a local theater company, and she forced her heart to move on from Nashville and Belmont and every memory of Ryan. It didn’t work, of course. Not after she got settled in the Northwest and not after she found new friends and new ways to spend her free time. The memories never died. But once every twelve months, on Black Friday, she gave herself permission to go back, to relive that happiest time when all the world stood still, and to find herself again in that late-spring starry night with Ryan

  Black Friday and once in a while on a rainy jog through Portland the day after. When she couldn’t quite return from the trip back to what once seemed so real. When she couldn’t convince herself he wasn’t waiting for her at The Bridge. When she missed him so much she could hardly breathe.

  The way she felt now.

  C HA P T E R S I X

  The hissing was getting louder.

  Charlie felt like he had invisible demons on his shoulders, vicious, threatening, murderous demons, and in the last few days, their voices had gotten so loud he could barely concentrate, barely hold a conversation. He parked his ’98 Chevy on the curb outside The Bridge, gathered the mail from the front seat, and went inside. Donna was out getting milk and eggs when the carrier came, so he decided to bring it here to open. As if maybe that might help sway the contents to be a little more favorable. The snow from Thanksgiving weekend had melted, but last night another storm had dumped four inches across middle Tennessee. The ground was slippery as he made his way inside.

  What’s the point, Charlie Barton? He could almost sense the evil laughter in the empty storefront, the sense of despair so great it nearly consumed him. You already know what the mail’s going to say. More bad news. Just toss it in the trash and drive off a cliff. You’re worthless, a failure, just like your dad predicted.

  “No.” His response was audible, and it startled him. That’s not true. I won’t believe that. He gave a quick shake of his head, as if by doing so he could rid himself of the voices. Why was it so cold? He rubbed his hands together. Franklin hadn’t been this cold as far back as he could remember. More snow was expected in the next few hours.

  The Bridge was freezing inside, the utilities long since turned off due to nonpayment. Not that it mattered. It was Tuesday, December 11, and he was no closer to buying books for his store. No closer to finding an answer to the debt weighing him down and pressing in around him.

  Which was why he’d come here this afternoon with the mail. He had submitted a loan application to the banker who once spent his free time here at The Bridge with his wife. If anyone could approve a loan, it was this man. “I have a good feeling about this, God . . . I know how You are. How You like to come through at the last minute.” He laughed, the sound lost on his chattering teeth. “That’s gonna happen here. I can feel it.”

  Charlie, you’re crazy. No one would loan you money. You’re not worth anything. You’re a bookseller, Charlie. Banks loan money to people with a way to pay it back. Come on.

  “Stop!” This time he raised his voice. “J
esus . . . give me peace. Stop the voices. Please!”

  And like that, they were quiet.

  His hands trembled more than before. He laid the envelopes out on his front counter. Two pieces, all that he’d brought for this moment. The first from his banker friend. The second from the company that leased him the building. Suddenly, the stone countertop caught his attention.

  As if he might find a way back to the days before the store died, Charlie spread his hands lightly over the counter. How many conversations had he shared over this piece of stone? And how many books had passed over the counter on their way to changing a life? Even saving a life? Books could do that. It was the reason Charlie believed in the bookstore.

  It had saved his, after all. No other way he would have survived the loss of their little girl, the loss of the dream of a family. His hope was found in books, and in novels of redemption and hope, purpose and true love. Through them God had given him a purpose. The purpose of putting books in the hands of other people like him.

  Hurting people.

  He straightened and took a deep breath. Waiting wouldn’t change the contents inside the envelopes. Since only the banker’s letter could contain the answer he needed, he started with the letter from the leasing company. A week ago he’d called the manager and asked for time. “The flood did me in,” he told the man. “Please give me another two months to start making money. Then I’ll find a way to pay you back.”

  The man reluctantly agreed to take the case to his supervisor. Whatever their answer, it was contained in the piece of mail in front of him. He loosened the flap with his thumb and willed his hands to be still. If only it were warmer in here. He eased the letter from the envelope and opened it. His fingers shook so much, the sound of rattling paper filled the empty space.

  Dear Mr. Barton,

  As per your request to extend grace in the payment of your lease, we have reached a decision. Ultimately, we would have agreed to your request. However, we have been contacted by the building’s owner, and he is no longer in a position to wait on your lease payments. He has decided to sell the building, and he would like to offer it to you first.