Like Never Before

by Melissa Tagg

  He winked on that last part, and she felt her jaw drop. But why was she surprised? This was Case Walker. Where did she think Logan got his observant nature from, anyway?

  She walked with Case back to the church and sat in the seat Logan would’ve if he’d been there. Listened to the whole sermon and stayed all the way until the pastor dismissed them at the end.

  Might even have stuck around to talk to the people who sat near her, if not for the text from Ledge.

  Stopped by the office on the way home from church. It’s not good. You need to see this.

  The sight of his bruised knuckles was almost enough to convince Logan not to knock.

  Do it. You’ve been dragging your feet for too long about too many things.

  He knocked.

  Rick answered.

  Smudges of blue and purple rimmed the ridge of his father-in-law’s cheekbone, and a flint edge hardened his eyes. No invitation to come in. “What do you want?”

  “To talk.” Yesterday’s storms had lapped all the moisture and warmth from the air, leaving an arid cool that felt more like autumn than spring. He should’ve grabbed a hoodie, especially if this conversation wasn’t going to move inside. Which, judging from Rick’s rooted stance on the welcome mat, it wasn’t.

  “I said all I had to say down at the police station last night.”

  “Rick, who is it?” Helen’s voice drifted from the second floor.

  “No one.” He called the reply over his shoulder, then pinned Logan with a leaden glare, as if daring him to counter.

  This was pointless, wasn’t it? Futile. He’d debated it all day—first this morning as he’d made waffles for Charlie while the rest of the family was at church, and then all through an afternoon of Disney movies and glances at the neon pink synthetic cast on his daughter’s arm, already half covered in signatures and drawings.

  But he’d had to at least try.

  “You know Emma wouldn’t have wanted this.”

  “Emma’s not here.”

  He could taste the sour resentment in Rick’s tone, hear the bitter words his father-in-law didn’t need to say. Because of you.

  He didn’t know when it’d happened . . . but it had happened. Somewhere along the line, Rick’s hurt had morphed into blaming Logan. Maybe it’d been there the whole time and he just had never been home long enough to realize it. Didn’t really matter when, though, did it?

  “I’m sorry about yesterday, Rick. I overreacted, I panicked. I know that’s no excuse, but please hear me when I say I am very sorry.” He’d rehearsed the words the whole way over, but they came out flat now. Unconvincing.

  “What’s done is done.”

  Apology acknowledged, then, if not exactly accepted.

  Rick unfolded his arms. “I might have overreacted myself—filing that police report.”

  “Well, it doesn’t sound like there are going to be any formal charges.” At least, that was the impression the officer had given last night. Although the report would still be filed. If someone did an extensive enough background check on Logan, they could come across it.

  Hadley’s people could come across it. Who knew what might happen then?

  All Logan knew was that if he were advising a candidate in the process of assembling a team of staffers, he’d recommend pristine backgrounds all around. Not even a whiff of trouble. The last thing you want to do is hand the other side any kind of ammo, real or perceived.

  But that was exactly what he’d done with Rick and Helen these past couple months. One misstep after another. He was practically building for them their argument for why he should let Charlie stay with them.

  But something firm stitched through him now, sharp and unwieldy. “Charlie’s my daughter, sir. I know better than anyone I’m not a perfect father. Don’t think that fact doesn’t hound me day in and day out. But I am her father.” He walked down the cement stairs as the flag jutting from the house slapped against the siding.

  “Logan, you should know I’m talking to a lawyer in the morning.”

  He froze on the sidewalk, halfway to his car.

  “He specializes in custody issues.”

  He veered around. “There’s no issue here. I’m legally her father.”

  Rick grasped the door handle with one hand. “I’m just giving you a heads-up.” With that, he closed the door.

  The trek to his car was a near-stagger, last night’s too-few hours of sleep not nearly enough to combat the weariness slogging through him now, nor the alarm at Rick’s words. He didn’t honestly intend to sue for custody, did he? Did Helen support this?

  Logan’s anxiety only built as he drove toward Dad’s house, the residential neighborhood tapering as he neared the edge of town. He never should have come back to Maple Valley. He should’ve just let the lawyer handle the sale of the newspaper and stayed in LA. None of this would be happening right now.

  But you would’ve missed out.

  On what, the first fist fight of his adult life?

  On all this time with Charlie.

  On seeing her blossom with the speech pathologist. She wasn’t babbling his ears off, but they’d had an entire audible conversation this morning. And Jenessa—a rift he’d once assumed irreversible had not only begun to mend, but he felt like he’d actually helped her some. Ever since the fundraiser, she’d been taking photos for the paper and spending time with Abby building the website.

  He’d tried to encourage Raegan the couple times he’d seen her upset about Bear, and it’d been a blast seeing Kate and Colton together, and hanging out with Seth.

  And Amelia.

  He closed his eyes, only for a fleeting second but long enough for his tire to slip off the gravel road. He jerked his eyes open and steered back into the center of the narrow road.

  Amelia.

  God, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

  Was it a prayer or just a frustrated declaration?

  Do you do signs, God? Is that still a thing? Burning bushes and talking donkeys? Dad said you’d wait for me, but I don’t know how much longer I can wait for you.

  Dad’s house came into view, a blazing dusk throwing scarlet hues against its rustic exterior. He pulled in, recognizing Amelia’s car parked under the basketball hoop—same spot she’d parked that first night he came home. How could that only have been a couple months ago?

  She was sitting on the porch swing, Charlie by her side. They both waved when he approached, Amelia with a Sharpie in hand. A breeze clattered through the wind chimes in the corner, and he climbed the steps, a chary slowness to his movement.

  “Hey, Logan.” Amelia seemed subdued, maybe even upset. Because he hadn’t returned any of her calls or texts, perhaps. Or had something else happened in the time since he’d brushed her off at the hospital?

  You could’ve at least said goodbye to her last night. Or responded to any one of her messages.

  He just hadn’t been able to get over the feeling that in the past few weeks he’d done all over again what he did right before Emma died. Let himself get distracted. Something as innocuous as music then, and it’d cost him the chance to say goodbye to his wife.

  And getting lost in this thing with Amelia now? It’d sidetracked him from his career and, even worse, from the gravity of his in-laws’ mistrust. Maybe if he’d been paying more attention, he’d have realized how serious they were about their doubts in his capability as a father. How far they were willing to go.

  “Look, Daddy.” Charlie jumped off the swing and ran to him before he’d even reached the top of the steps. She held out her arm. Amelia had signed not far from his own name, the stem of her A wrapping around the rest of her name to form a heart.

  “You’re going to have that cast full in no time.”

  “I know.”

  He lifted her up, pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Do me a favor, Bug? Go find Grandpa and see if he wants to make popcorn for dinner? Sunday night tradition.”

  He let her slide down him and held the front
door open for her to run inside. When he turned, Amelia was standing.

  “You’re a hard one to get ahold of, Logan Walker.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s been . . . a day.”

  “I didn’t mean to be a bother—”

  “You weren’t a bother.” He hated that his silence had made her feel that way. Hated his own reticence now, the space he couldn’t bring himself to fill.

  “At first, I was just checking in, but then . . .” She let out a breath, one heavy with distress. Something else had happened. “I stopped by the office after church today. Ledge texted—he’d left a coat in the pressroom on Friday, and he went by to pick it up and said as soon as he walked in he knew something was wrong.” She’d started pacing in front of the porch swing but stopped now. “Logan, we think the office was hit by lightning. The server’s down, all the computers. None of that’s such a huge deal, but the press is dead. Not jammed or in need of a new part, but completely dead. You should see the cord. Ledge says we’re lucky a fire didn’t start.”

  Oh great. He pinched the bridge of his nose, so far from frustrated he didn’t even have words.

  Maybe it would’ve been better if a fire had started, burnt the whole place down and left him with an insurance check instead of a newspaper on life support. Except no, because Freddie’s useless insurance policy was part of what had gotten the News into such a hole to begin with.

  “What are we going to do? I think the machine is beyond fixing this time.” She hugged her arms to herself. “Maybe we could call the Communicator. Maybe they’d print for us. I know they contract with some other area papers and—”

  “Amelia.” Her name escaped in a murmur. “I can’t . . . I can’t think about this right now.”

  “But we don’t have time not to think about it. We’ve got the centennial issue this week and our regular issue.”

  He crossed paths with her, dropped into the swing. “They may not be able to come out.”

  “Logan, what are you—”

  “They’re just papers.” Exasperation budged into his tone. “I asked for a sign. Maybe this is it. Lightning strike—sounds about right.”

  She stood in front of him, silhouetted by the setting sun. “What are you talking about?”

  “I need to sell, Amelia. I need to go back to LA.”

  “But the paper, the centennial. The article we spent months on.”

  He looked up at her, rubbing his stubbly cheeks, trying to convince himself it was just mild disappointment on her face—not heartbreak.

  “It’s not just me and my job at stake here. Think about Mae—she acts like a grump, sure, but I think the staff is the closest thing she has to family around here. And what about Jenessa? You said yourself that she’s a different person since she started taking photos for us.” She sat beside him, the swing’s hinges creaking. “I know you’ve had a hard weekend, Logan, but to make a snap decision just like that—”

  “It’s not a snap decision. I’ve been poring over the numbers for two months now, you know that. I’ve met with a financial advisor, a lawyer. I’ve talked to insurance people. I even got ahold of a former paper owner who sold to Cranford last year, just to get his take.” He ran one hand over the swing’s wooden armrest. “I told Dad last night this isn’t me—this guy who stalls on decisions and sabotages his own career prospects. It’s just . . . not me.”

  “And at the library, or yesterday at the bridge—that wasn’t you?”

  He reached for her hand. “That was me.” She looked up, and oh, the hope in her eyes killed him. “But it was me getting ahead of myself.”

  She lowered her gaze, slid her hand free, and after a painful moment, stiffened. “Just tell the truth, Logan. You’re scared.”

  “Amelia—”

  “You don’t want to take a risk. Not on the paper. Not on me.”

  If she’d meant for the words to sting, they did the job. Enough that he couldn’t stop his biting reply. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You want to talk about not taking risks? Who’s the one who insists on staying in Maple Valley even when multiple opportunities have landed at her feet? Did you ever even consider Cranford’s job offer? Or how about all the times Mae has said her niece could get you a spot on a national paper?”

  She stood, the swing jostling at her movement. “What’s so wrong with being content where I am? Not everyone has crazy-big dreams.”

  “No, everyone doesn’t. But you do. Kendall Wilkins saw it in that essay you wrote him. I see it every time you talk about the Wilkins article. I saw it when we were in D.C. You want something different. Not better or more—but different. And you can tell yourself all you want that you’re content here. But content isn’t the same as stagnant.”

  She turned her back on him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I do because I know you.” He stood. “You’re scared of leaving the comfort of what you know for the possibility of what you don’t.” He stepped closer, hurling the words over her shoulder. “And you’re so scared of becoming Amelia Earhart, disappearing or being forgotten, that you insist on staying in a small town where everyone knows you, everyone sees you.”

  She whipped around. “Stop it, Logan.”

  “You’re scared of leaving the safe little world you’ve created here, and you’re constantly scared that people will let you down.”

  “Maybe that’s because people do let me down.”

  “Forget Jeremy—”

  “I’m not talking about Jeremy.”

  Her words parked in front of him, sour and choking. How had they gotten here? Tension suffocated the air between them. If he could take it all back—

  “Well, good for you, Logan. You finally gave me one of your famous speeches.”

  “Amelia—”

  But she was already on her way down the steps, posture not nearly rigid enough to hide her hurt.

  Dear Mary,

  If you were my daughter, I’d tell you about how I met your birth mother.

  She was quite possibly the most sullen person I’d ever encountered. I’d say “chip on her shoulder,” but it was more like a boulder. Tough home life. Bad grades. Few friends.

  I have no idea why she came to the youth event at church that first time. A desperate grasp for something, anything, perhaps. But she showed up, and we met, and something clicked in my heart. I watched her blossom in the coming months. She’d found a place to belong, a makeshift family. On nights when her home life got unbearable, she stayed with Jeremy and me.

  I think I pridefully thought we’d saved her.

  Then she made a mistake at a party one night. Woke up the next morning not even certain who she’d been with. Didn’t take long to discover she was pregnant. And it was as if all the hope she’d breathed in seeped from her lungs.

  So we stepped in again. Tried to save her again.

  Only I’m realizing now, the one I was really trying to save was myself. Dani might’ve stumbled in a one-night stand. But I’d been crumbling slowly for months.

  And it was never fair to blame her decision to keep you for my own broken dreams and misplaced hope.

  17

  Amelia Bentley. I was almost sure you were going to turn down a job offer from me a second time.”

  C.J. Cranford’s clipped pace and sleek silver blazer matched the glass-accented lobby of the downtown Dixon office building—fluorescent lights overhead, vertical floor-to-ceiling windows, slate-hued paint. Metallic letters spelled the words Cranford Communications on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk.

  What Amelia wouldn’t give to be facing a disgruntled Mae in the closet-sized lobby of the News office instead. To hear the clunky chug of their old, half-broken—no, now completely dead—press instead of this quiet hum. She could barely even pick up the smell of ink over the bowl of flaky potpourri on the receptionist’s desk.

  She accepted C.J.’s handshake. “Well, last time I already had a
job. This time . . .”

  This time the News was on its way to nonexistence, and Amelia to unemployment.

  Had it really only been a week and a half since Logan had stood in front of their staff and announced his decision? The cost of fixing the press was simply too steep. And it was both too last-minute and too expensive to find another area printer to churn out this week’s paper.

  The lightning strike had aided the decision he was probably eventually going to make all along.

  Far as she knew, the sale to Cranford hadn’t been finalized yet. But he’d left for LA two days ago anyway, Charlie in tow, along with her last fragile piece of foolish hope that he might still change his mind.

  He might as well have left the night they argued on the porch. Nothing had been the same since then. Didn’t matter that she actually understood why he’d made the choice he did. That somewhere, behind the cracks in her heart, she’d seen this coming.

  The logic of his decision couldn’t come close to catching up with the ache wheeling through her. Oh, she missed him. Missed Charlie.

  “I know this isn’t what you wanted. I get it.” C.J. pushed her low, russet ponytail over one shoulder. “You had an attachment to that paper. But I hope you’ll at least consider my offer. Let me show you around.”

  Logan had cornered Amelia in the office after everyone else had left. Told her he’d asked Cranford to offer her a job once the sale was complete. “Even if they do permanently dissolve the News, they’ll still be covering an additional town. So it makes sense that they’d add a position. Obviously it should be you.”

  If he’d expected her undying gratitude at that, he hadn’t gotten it. “Thanks, but I already had the opportunity to move to Dixon once, Logan. Maple Valley is home.”

  His shoulders had dropped, as if she’d stuck the last pin in an already deflated balloon. “Home or just a hiding place, Amelia?”

  The overly sweet mocha she’d downed on the forty-five-minute drive to Dixon churned in her stomach now. C.J. led her through a glass door and into a white-lighted open room with desks displaying oversized monitors that couldn’t be more than a couple years old. A whir of activity enlivened the space, fingers tapping on keyboards, the purr of printers—all of it both familiar and foreign at once.