Chapter 5
Five
“Love one another.”
—George Harrison
Molly avoided him for two very long days. At the end of the second day, they were wrapping up at the site when Keisha drove in, her car skidding to a stop before she got out and called for Joseph. The frantic edge to her voice put Linc immediately on alert.
Something was wrong.
Joseph came rushing out of the house where he’d been working.
Keisha ran over to him.
Linc could see she was crying.
“What’s going on?” Charlie, one of the other volunteers, asked him.
“I don’t know.” Joseph and Keisha had become their friends, and Lincoln wanted to know what he could do to help them. He walked over to them. “Are you okay?”
The look of terror on Joseph’s face sent a chill down Linc’s spine. “Jalen has been arrested.”
Jalen was their fourteen-year-old son, and he, too, had become a friend during the summer as he worked with them when he wasn’t in summer school to catch up in math.
“For what?”
Keisha looked at him, eyes full of fear and anger. “For being Black.”
Lincoln was taken aback, both by the vehemence in her tone and the terror coming from both of them.
“What do you know, honey?” Joseph asked, his voice tense.
Keisha wiped tears from her face. “He and two friends were walking in town after school let out, and according to the other boys, the police stopped them to find out where they were going. When they said they were going home, the police started asking them if they were part of a fight that happened last night. Jalen said they knew nothing about it. The police said they didn’t like his attitude and cuffed him.
When the other boys protested, they told them to shut up or they’d take them in, too. ”
“Let’s go get him out,” Joseph said.
“If we can do anything…” Linc said, feeling impotent, angry and scared for his friends.
“We’ll be back,” Joseph said. “Finish cleaning up, and call it a day.” He got into the driver’s side of Keisha’s car, waited for her to get in and took off, leaving a cloud of dust behind him.
“Jesus,” Cory said. “What the hell?”
“I don’t know,” Linc said, his stomach twisted in knots.
“It’s not good,” Desmond, who was one of Joseph’s business partners, said. “Happens far too often, and sometimes it doesn’t end well.”
“How can they get away with that?” Charlie asked.
Desmond, who was also Black, shot him a withering look. “Get away with it? They’re the police. They get away with whatever the fuck they want. Who’s gonna stop them?”
“There has to be something we can do,” Linc said.
“Do us all a favor and stay in your lane. This is so much bigger than you and one summer in Mississippi.” Desmond walked away, got in his truck and drove off.
Linc hoped he was going to help Joseph and Keisha, because it seemed like they’d need all the help they could get.
“What’s going on?” Molly asked when she walked over from one of the other houses.
Linc caught her up.
“Come on. No way. He’s the best kid. They can’t just do that.”
“That’s what we were just saying,” Linc told her, “and apparently, they can do it. From what Desmond said, it happens far too often.”
“That makes me sick,” Molly said, folding her arms as if she needed a hug.
He understood how she felt.
Much later, they sat with a subdued group of volunteers in camp, wishing they could do something for Joseph and Keisha. But they’d done what had been requested of them and had stayed put while they prayed for Jalen and his family.
Linc gave Molly’s hand a squeeze, got up from their gathering and walked away, needing a minute to himself.
He stood by the tree line, staring into the darkness as despair seeped into his soul.
Jalen was the best kid—fun, funny, talented at sports and music, an A student except for the math he struggled with, and respectful to his parents as well as the volunteers he worked with.
The thought of anything happening to him, an innocent kid caught up in something so much bigger than him…
Then Molly was there, her arm around his waist and her head on his shoulder, and that was all it took for him to feel slightly better, to know she understood, that she felt the same way he did.
“It’s so awful,” she said softly.
“I wish there was something we could do.”
“We can continue to support Joseph and his family and the other friends we’ve made here and come back next summer if they’ll have us. We’ll come as often as we can, and maybe, over time, we’ll start to see things get better.”
“I like that idea a lot.”
Linc put his arm around her and held her close to him, needing to keep her there for a lot longer than this summer. “I’m not going to England, Mol.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He let her have the last word, but his mind was already made up. After spending this summer with her, the only thing he wanted was more of how he felt when she was in his arms.
“What happened to Jalen?” Will asked.
“They released him two days later without charging him with anything.”
“They didn’t hurt him, did they?” Ella asked.
“Thankfully, they didn’t, but it took a long time for their family to get past the incident.
Keisha would tell you that Joseph was never quite the same afterward.
But Jalen, he survived and thrived. He’s an attorney now, working on behalf of Black men and women who are unjustly detained or incarcerated. He’s made quite a name for himself.”
“They came here,” Hunter said. “I remember it.”
“They did,” Linc said. “You would’ve been about three or four. Jalen was looking at law schools up here and toured UVM. They stayed with us.”
“I remember, too,” Hannah said. “He pushed us on the swings. They had a daughter, too, right?”
Linc nodded. “Jasmine. She was three years younger than Jalen. She’s an accountant and has three kids. We hear from them at Christmas, and I talk to Joseph at least once a month.”
“We spent a second summer working with him.” Molly snuggled Callie, who was sound asleep in her arms. “And made a lot of good friends over those summers. It was the most rewarding work we ever did. Joseph built almost three hundred homes, and we still support the foundation he started to help other first-time homeowners.”
“And Dad didn’t go to England,” Max said.
“Not that fall, but I did get there eventually.” He smiled at Molly.
“Your mom planned a trip for our tenth anniversary. You older kids might remember how she took me on a Beatles tour. We went to Liverpool, Abbey Road, Eleanor Rigby’s tombstone, Penny Lane and Strawberry Field, among other places. She was very thorough.”
“I never wanted him to regret giving up that year in England for me.”
“And I never did. Not for one second, as you know.”
“Mom, what would you have done if he’d had to go to England?” Hunter asked.
“I suppose I would’ve gone with him, but I’d promised Gramps I’d come to work at the store when I got home from Mississippi. I didn’t want to disappoint him, either.”
“What I want to know is how you ended up in Vermont running Mom’s family business,” Will said. “Any time we’ve asked you about that, you’ve always said it was a long story that was better left untold.”
“I still feel that way, but now I need to tell you because today I heard from my family for the first time since my father made me choose between him and your mother.”
Charley gasped. “What? Seriously? He made you choose?”
“Very seriously,” Linc said, gazing at Molly. “Of course, there was never any contest, but that was a terribly difficult time for us.”
The night before they were due to break camp and head home, Lincoln went looking for Molly. Since the camp wasn’t very big, she shouldn’t have been hard to find, but after he’d looked everywhere, he started asking the others where she was.
“She said something about going into town,” one of the other volunteers said.
“By herself?” Ever since Jalen’s arrest, he’d been more aware of the potential for trouble. Alarmed, Linc was running for his bike before their friend Gloria could finish confirming that Molly had gone into town by herself.
Just as he rounded the corner to head for town, he encountered Molly coming back and knew a moment of pure relief as he turned his bike to ride to camp with her.
“What’re you doing out here?” she asked.
“Looking for you.”
The rode back to camp together and stashed the bikes before going to sit inside Molly’s tent. “What were you doing in town by yourself, sweetheart?” he asked.
“I wanted to buy you a present, but I couldn’t find anything I liked.”
“You don’t have to get me anything.”
“I wanted you to know how much I’m going to miss you.”
His heart broke when he saw her subtly swipe at a tear. Linc put his arm around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. “You’re not going to have to miss me. I’m going home to Vermont with you. I bought my bus ticket yesterday.”
“You did not!”
“I did, too. I told you… My plans have changed. I want different things now.”
“You can’t. You’ll regret not going to England.”
He held her even closer. “The only thing I’d regret is letting you get away. I’m going to Vermont.”
“You’ll hate it there. You’ll be so bored.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. If you’re there, I’ll never be bored.
” He pulled back from her, tipped her chin up and kissed the tears off her cheeks.
“I swear to God I’ll never regret not going to England, but I know for sure I’d always regret not going with you.
” Then he kissed her lips, lingering over the sweet, salty taste of her.
“I really need you to believe me when I tell you I’ve fallen madly in love with you this summer, and any chance I have of being happy is all wrapped up in you now. ”
She wiped new tears from her face. “I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible.”
“Have you met you? You’re the best person I’ve ever known. Anyone would want to be with you.”
“Do you promise you’ll never blame me for giving up Oxford?”
“I promise.”
“You’re sure, Linc? Really, really sure about this?”
“Guess what?”
“What?”
“I love you more than the Beatles.”