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Oh God. Her father. He was going to kill her. She felt her skin grow hot and then cold as she thought about what he'd do, the way he would yell, if he ever found out about her impromptu--and completely unladylike--train trip.
"We need to get off at the next town." Her voice sounded way too shaky for her liking, and she forcefully steadied it before adding, "I shouldn't have done this. I know better."
The train slowed down at the next stop, and she was more than a little surprised when he helped her climb off, even more surprised to find him getting off right behind her with both of their packages in his hands.
He looked at the timetable posted on the wall. "The next train back won't be here for an hour."
She tried to tamp down on it this time, that itch on the back of her neck, that wild yearning coming over her again. But one taste of adventure had given her a craving for more.
She wanted more so badly that she could taste it on her tongue, almost as if someone had given her one short lick of the sweetest lollipop before wrapping it back up and putting it away--out of her reach but where she could still see it and long for it--for good.
"Well," she found herself saying, despite the fact that she knew better, "if we're going to be stuck here anyway, I might as well show you the waterfall."
His beautiful mouth quirked up slightly at the corner, and when he raised his eyebrows, she raised hers right back. This adventure might have been his idea, but now it was her turn to show him things he hadn't seen.
The waterfall was only a few minutes' walk from the train station over the pretty red covered bridge. Soon they were standing in front of a cascading wall of water that arched off the rocks toward them. Warm from their short walk, feeling more confined than usual by the long, tight sleeves of her dress, she moved closer to the cool spray of water.
His warm voice caressed her. "Have you ever seen the back side of water?"
"Water doesn't have sides."
"Sure it does. The back side looks completely different. Come here, and I'll show you."
But this time, she definitely knew better. Heck, it was her stupid wild yearnings that had gotten her here, wasn't it? Carlos was dangerous. She'd known that from the start, right from that first conversation when he had unraveled her control as though she were simply a strand of tightly wound yarn.
"I can see it just fine from here, thank you."
"It's okay to be scared, pretty Olive. But life is unpredictable. Don't wait too long to take a risk."
"Stop calling me scared!" She turned on him in sudden fury, not just for constantly goading her, but at herself for all the things she wanted but was so scared to want, so scared to let herself feel. "I'm here, aren't I? I got on that freight train, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did."
But she could hear what he wasn't saying. That just because she'd taken one step didn't mean there weren't more in front of her, just waiting for her to decide if she was brave enough to take them.
"Fine. Show me the back side of water."
And this time when he reached for her hand, she wasn't distracted by the movement of a train, wasn't breathless from running...and she felt his touch all the way down past her skin, past her bones, past the blood that moved in her veins. All the way down into her heart as he carefully led her over slippery rocks to the small bank of dirt between the waterfall and the rock wall.
"Do you see it now?"
The water was a thick wall of movement, mesmerizing as it poured down from the rocks above their heads. It was nature's misty curtain falling with such grace and ease.
"You're right," she breathed in wonder. "Everything does look different from the other side."
She could feel his eyes on her, knew he wasn't looking at the strange shapes of the trees, the sky, the mountains through the water. Her mouth tingled in anticipation of the kiss she knew was coming.
But then he said, "Come on, pretty Olive, let's get you out of here before you get too wet."
And that was when she realized, just as he hadn't forced her to get on the train with him, he wouldn't force her to kiss him either. If she wanted a kiss from Carlos, she'd have to be the one to take that step.
To choose not only his kiss...but him as well.
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.
