Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
It was almost a relief that Sam had to leave for a little while. Not because she didn't want to see him—part of Lola wanted to grab his hand and never, ever let go—but because Lola felt like she needed a moment to breathe , to come to terms with Sam Todd really, truly being alive and back in her life. She felt wobbly even though she was sitting, and gazed at the spilled coffee with some dismay. She could have used that right now.
Instead she began sopping it up with napkins, because that gave her something to do besides tremble. Imelda called, "You don't have to do that," from behind the counter, and Lola nodded agreement: she knew she didn't have to, and if the little doughnut shop wasn't so busy, she knew the proprietress would have already come to clean up. In fact, Imelda did that now that Lola was tidying, saying, "Sorry I didn't get to this before."
"Not at all. You're busy and we were…" Mooning over each other, Lola thought with a happy little shiver.
Imelda flashed a broad, strong smile as she wiped up the table. "Old flame? I thought you were going to faint when you saw him."
"The love of my life," Lola murmured, and to her surprise, Imelda's gaze went so bright tears nearly fell.
"Oh, that's wonderful. I hope that's wonderful?"
"It is," Lola whispered. "Just overwhelming."
"You need coffee," Imelda announced sternly. "And to eat that bear claw."
Lola obediently took a bite, then widened her eyes and said, around a mouthful of pastry, "Oh. Oh, that's good!"
The doughnut shop owner looked pleased and went back behind the counter to throw away sopping paper towels away, then returned with a new cup of coffee. "On the house."
That was at least the second time she'd been offered free food in Virtue. If that kind of thing kept up, Lola thought, she would have to move back just to save on grocery bills. And then she jolted a little, accepting the cup, because she hadn't let herself even consider the idea of returning to Virtue. The thought hadn't been allowed to so much as cross her mind, until all of a sudden there it was, bold as brass. She sipped the coffee, not quite burning her tongue, and hummed with approval. "That's very good."
"Best coffee in town," Imelda said proudly. "So Sam Todd, hm? Picked yourself a quiet one, didn't you?"
"He wasn't so quiet, back when I knew him," Lola said with a little smile. "But it's been a long time."
Imelda put her hand on Lola's shoulder, a brief, friendly squeeze of support. "I hope it all works out for you."
Lola smiled again and nodded, but couldn't quite bring herself to say so do I out loud. It seemed like asking too much. Instead she turned to see if she could catch a glimpse of Sam and the two younger men out in the square.
She could, but they were distant: at the far end, near the new cafe, with Sam gesturing at something off to the right from there. The school was that direction, right behind the line of stores along the square's edge; beyond that, Lola vaguely remembered a hotel of some sort, and then the train station, of course. That had been closed down for decades, though; apparently since not long after she'd left, in fact. She thought that was a shame, but Virtue had managed a resurgence without it, so maybe she was wrong.
The men struck off in that direction, toward the old train station, and Lola turned back to her coffee and doughnut, lost in smiling thought.
Sam really had changed so very little. Still so handsome, so quietly assured. He'd never made a fuss, back when they were seeing each other. Not even when his parents made it clear they had much higher expectations of him than Charlotte Nelson, small-town nobody. He had just told them, over and over again, to get used to it, or get used to not having him in their lives once he reached eighteen. Lola had, a few times, tried to tell him she understood if he didn't want to challenge them, but Sam…
He hadn't even laughed, exactly. He'd smiled, shook his head, and said, "It's their decision, Char. If they don't get that I love you with everything I am, then they don't deserve to have either of us in their lives. I hope they'll come around, but if they don't?" He'd shrugged. "I've got you."
Lola, who came from no money, had moments of worrying that Sam, who came from a lot of it, didn't really understand what he was getting himself into, saying things like that. But at the same time, she'd never doubted him. Every once in a while, even now, she thought that his absolute confidence in her, in them , had been what gave her the strength to walk away from Virtue all those years ago. Charlotte Nelson, little miss nobody from the wrong side of the tracks, would have been terrified to go, but Charlotte Nelson, the woman Sam Todd loved? She could do anything, because Sam believed in her. Even after he was gone, she could do anything, because he believed in her. She hadn't exactly lost that mindset along the way, but its ferocity had faded with age.
Somehow she'd drunk all her coffee, and finished one and a half of the really-quite-large bear claw doughnuts. Lola blinked at the scraps left on her plate, then chuckled at herself and got up to pay, even though Imelda had said it was on the house. The proprietress insisted she'd meant it, so Lola put her money in the tip jar instead. Imelda gave her a scolding-but-also-pleased-and-amused glance, and Lola was smiling as she pulled her lumpy hat on to go back outside.
Sunlight bounced off the old snow, throwing bright sparkles into the air. Or maybe that was just Lola's heart, soaring in a way she couldn't remember it having done in many years. She had nowhere in particular to go, but wasn't surprised when her feet took her the same direction Sam had gone. Not because she was following him , she told herself. Because she'd lived over that way, all those years ago. She doubted her old house was still there, but she was drawn there anyway, following familiar paths that hadn't changed much with time.
So much of Virtue seemed to be like that. Exactly the same, and still somehow so different. Just like she was, Lola supposed. Maybe just like Sam was.
The schoolyard rang out with young voices as she passed by, just as it had back then. The building was new, though. She recognized the corner store near it, though it had changed names, paint, and decor since she'd last seen it. A rusted lock was open on the train station gates, and a few footprints here and there in the patchy snow suggested Sam and the other men had perhaps gone in to take a look. Lola hesitated, but in the end she went ahead and walked past, literally crossing the tracks as she took the road toward her old house.
It almost surprised her, how close the house really was to town. She'd always felt like she lived far away, but really, it wasn't more than a twenty minute walk, even at her slower pace these days. The distance, she now realized, had been in the wealth disparity between herself and Sam. Or maybe it had been in how his parents treated her because of that disparity, but back then she'd been very young, and had seen the distance as physical.
This was still by no means the wealthiest part of town, though the houses were prettier than she remembered, and the yards generally well-kept. Handsome trees separated the lots, though they were bare-branched now, thin fingers moving gently in a cold wind. The streets were paved, which they hadn't been when she was a kid. She couldn't quite remember if they had been by the time she'd left.
The street that led to her house was Stranger Lane. They'd thought it was funny when she was a kid—only strange people lived there!—but again with the wisdom of age and distance, she realized that the strangers it referred to were relative newcomers to Virtue. People like Sam's family had settled the town in the sixteen hundreds. Families like Lola's had only been there thirty or forty years, at the time: blow-ins, living and building on the land that was left, instead of the choice pickings the wealthy settlers had taken.
Her house was still there.
Lola's breath rushed out of her and she stopped, a hand on a nearby mailbox to steady herself, as she gazed at the old building. It was clear no one lived there now, although it was tidily kept up, for an empty house. The windows and doors were boarded, but neatly, like it had been a preventative measure rather than done after everything had been wrecked. Lola murmured, "I'll be damned," and went to test a step before walking up the stairs to the broad, wrap-around porch.
Everything was too well-boarded to peek inside, but the porch was still in good condition, as were the exterior walls. The paint wasn't new, but it wasn't peeling and ugly, either. It gave Lola an unexpected sense of both satisfaction and sorrow: she would have liked to have seen it lived in, full of life. Ideally full of children, like it had been when she'd been young. Unable to stop herself, she gave the porch railing a pat before she went back down into the yard. She felt as if she was telling the house good job. Good job for still standing, good job for holding its place on the quiet road. Good job for giving her a memory to come back to, even if it wasn't her home anymore.
"Can I help you, ma'am?" A woman's voice called from a few houses down, and Lola glanced up to see a girl in her twenties coming out of what had been Marcy Shultz's house, back in the day. She had a baby on one hip and a cautious expression on a face that was as familiar as the house.
"Good Lord," Lola said. "Are you Marcy Shultz's granddaughter?"
The young woman's eyebrows shot up. "Marcy Keogh, yeah, but…who are you?"
"I grew up here," Lola said with a gesture at her house. "Marcy and I got on like a house on fire when we were kids. You look just like her," she said fondly. "I'm Lola—Charlotte—Nelson."
"Oh my gosh!" The girl's jaw dropped. "Holy shit, you came back! Grandma will be thrilled! Nana! Grandma!" The last two words were bellowed, and the baby in the girl's arm squalled with dismay. "Oh, dammit, she went into Syracuse for a doctor's appointment this morning, I forgot. You have to come back later and see her!"
"I'll be around a few days," Lola said, caught between caution and delight. "I'd love to see her again. Please tell her hello for me."
"Obviously, but holy crap, where have you been? She's going to want to know! Can I get your number so she can call you? Did you know Sam Todd is alive?"
Lola's heart lurched even as she couldn't stop a laugh. This was exactly why she didn't want to come back to Virtue: everybody knew everybody else's business. Even two generations removed, apparently. "I did, yes. My own granddaughter told me."
The girl's eyes went round. "You have a granddaughter here? In Virtue?"
"I do. Charlee, the chef over at?—"
"Oh my God! I work there! I know her! Holy shit! I didn't know she was, oh my God , Grandma's going to flip !"
Lola, remembering Marcy as a feet-firmly-on-the-ground kind of girl, had a momentary delightful image of that same girl, seventy years older, doing an actual flip. She ended up beaming at Marcy's granddaughter. "I'd like to see that. She can find me through Charlee, then, if that's all right?"
"That's perfect! That's amazing! That's, oh, hush, you're okay, aww, c'mon, sweetie…" The young mother brought her attention back to the theatrically crying infant, and Lola, smiling, left her to the hard job of parenting.
So far the return to Virtue had been much more positive than she'd imagined it would be, in all those years of wondering what if . Lola tucked her coat around herself a little more securely, walking into the wind now as she headed back toward town. Maybe she could handle going out to Sam's house, after all.
Maybe she could handle anything, after all.