The Long Walk

by Jill Cox

  I bit my lower lip to keep myself from laughing out loud, because looking back at me from Harper’s screen was a shot Jack had taken of me the previous day. My shoulder-length hair was sticking out every which way on top of my head, and there were circles under my eyes. But somehow, after more than a year of photos where my smile had looked like a jack-o-lantern’s, Jack had captured an expression I hadn’t seen on my face since… well, a long time ago.

  Kelly grinned at me from the other side of the Atlantic. “You look happy, Meredith.”

  “You do,” Anne agreed. “Tell this Jack person we said thanks for letting friends of friends access his Facebook posts.”

  “Stop that, you three.” I smiled big despite myself. “Now tell me: why are all three of you sitting in front of a computer on a Saturday afternoon? Don’t you have papers to grade?”

  “We do,” Kelly replied. “But more importantly, we’ve got exciting news.”

  “You’re joining Barry Manilow on his tour this summer?”

  “Better.” Her blue eyes brightened. “What’s on your calendar June 22nd?”

  “Nothing yet. Why?”

  “We’re coming to Paris,” Harper beamed. “All three of us, and we want you to join us for the weekend.”

  “Really?” My heart began to race. “Wait, you’re flying all that way just for one weekend?”

  “No,” Anne explained, clasping her hands primly in her lap. “See, there are these tour companies for high school students. For every six kids who sign up, a teacher goes for free, and the price goes down dramatically after twenty-five kids.”

  “Yeah, I know. I did that in high school with my French teacher.”

  “So did I, which is why I wanted to go with my students. But I only wrangled a few from my school, so Harper and Kelly convinced their administrator to let their students join mine.”

  “It didn’t take much effort,” Kelly winked. “Anne teaches at the best school in Suffolk County, and our assistant principal is an alumna.”

  “So, hold on – you three convinced twenty-five kids’ parents to let their babies fly to Europe with the youngest teachers in Boston? Are they nuts? Wait, are you nuts? Paris for one weekend with twenty-five jetlagged teenagers sounds like a disaster in the making.”

  “Not just for the weekend,” Anne corrected. “We’re flying into Florence first. We’ll spend Sunday through Tuesday there and head to Provence on Wednesday and Thursday. Paris will be our last stop, Friday through Sunday. We’ll head back home on Monday.”

  “So?” Kelly asked, her eyes wide. “Are you up for herding cats with us for three days? You can bring Jack if you’d like.”

  “Thank you,” I smiled as my pasty winter skin went pink again. “But it’s a little early for that. I don’t even know his middle name.”

  Harper glanced down at her phone, grinning. “Turns out you don’t know his first name either. Full name: Patrick John Kelly. At least, that’s what his Wikipedia page says. Did you know your new boyfriend’s novel has been published in thirteen countries and six different languages?”

  “What?” Kelly grabbed Harper’s phone, and as they stepped off-screen, I could hear them arguing whether or not that Jack Kelly was my Jack Kelly.

  I smiled at Anne and dared a question I wouldn’t have asked with the other girls listening. “So,” I said brightly. “When was the last time you talked to Dan?”

  “Um… Halloween, maybe?” Anne shifted in her seat. “I think he commented on my Instagram post that day.”

  I still didn’t know her side of the break-up story, but I knew Dan well enough to believe that his heart had never recovered from that sad day at Heathrow Airport. Yes, he’d gone out with a few girls over the past two years, but none of them lasted more than a few dates. And even though I knew better than to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong, Dan was my boy. I needed to see him happy again.

  “He’s doing well,” I reported, even though she hadn’t asked. “Somehow he landed this really cool job with some charity organization that works with the United Nations building water wells all over the world. The New York office wants to send him to Burundi soon since his French is expert-level, even eighteen months after he stopped using it every day.”

  “Really?” Anne’s face brightened in a way that I hadn’t seen since we’d left Paris, and I had to fight the urge to screenshot the image for Dan. Then her expression softened, and she leaned closer to the screen. “Thanks, Meredith,” she said quietly. “Tell him hello for me next time you talk to him.”

  “I will.” Kelly and Harper were still fussing in the background, so I stole another chance to play my favorite game. “You know, there’s a possibility he’ll end up full-time in the New York office if this trip to Burundi goes well.”

  “Really?” She repeated. “Why?”

  “Because Africa is closer to the east coast than it is to Portland, duh.” I held my tone steady so as not to give away my own game. “Anyway, he’s been working with a tutor the last few weeks. Someone he met at the Alliance Française or something. Her name is Mariane.”

  Emma Woodhouse, back in your service, Dan Thomas.

  Judging by the sudden flush in Anne’s cheeks, I felt justified leaving out the rest of the story. Like the fact that Mariane was old enough to be Dan’s grandmother. Not to mention the hairs that grew out of the seven moles on her haggard old face or the way she corrected his “lazy Rs.” Rude.

  As Harper settled down beside Anne again, Kelly asked the next obvious question: “Does Dan ever see Pete?”

  “Oh,” I stalled. “He only mentioned seeing him in mid-December, but I guess they might hang out from time to time. Wait, you knew Pete was back home?”

  “Well, yeah.” Kelly shot a terrified look at Harper. “We saw him last weekend.”

  “What?” My mouth went dry. “Where? At a teacher conference?”

  “No.” Harper brushed her hair off her neck. “Pete called me a couple of weeks ago to ask for directions up to Addison College from Logan Airport. He was headed up to the grad school’s preview weekend, so Kelly and I offered to drive him to Vermont. He’s still trying to pick between Addison and Stanford.”

  “He got in?” I took in a deep breath. “Pete got in to Addison and Stanford?”

  “Yes,” Harper replied, her blue eyes fixed on mine. “Columbia, Yale, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, too.”

  For the next few minutes, Harper and Kelly described Pete’s visit in the broadest strokes possible, and it might have worked, except I knew that trick. I’d used it on Drew in Paris. So as they boiled down their weekend in Vermont to a handful of facts, the butterflies in my gut turned to fire-breathing dragons.

  No freaking way. The famous Brooks Darby must have tagged along for the ride.

  I mean, no one actually admitted she was there, but I know how to read between the lines.

  As though my laptop could sense my inner dragon rearing her ugly head, our chat screen froze, then went blank. For the next few moments I waited for the Addison girls to call back, staring at my wall, asking myself how Peter Beckett Russell managed to always land on his feet, with a pretty sidekick trailing right behind. Wondering if I’d ever meant anything to him at all.

  And more importantly, why did I still care? He hadn’t reached out to me in any way since that day at the Treehouse. He hadn’t asked me to wait for him. He hadn’t asked me for one single thing. He’d simply… moved on.

  What was wrong with me? Why was I still hung up on this guy? I’d kept books from the library longer than I’d kept Pete in my life. If you counted the days between our first official date in mid-May and the day he left Lincoln City, Pete and I had only been together a few days longer than I’d been dating Jack. Only an idiot wastes time on schoolgirl crushes.

  And no one has time to waste.

  A car door shut outside my apartment. I glanced out my west-facing window expecting a surprise arrival for the B&B. But then I spied the familiar shock of blac
k hair and the quirky lad it belonged to, and sprinted across the room and onto the landing just as Jack reached the top step.

  “Oh, no. You heard me?” His eyes twinkled brightly in the moonlight as he slid one arm around my waist. “And I was so careful not to ruin the surprise.”

  “You’re back?” I breathed in his scent. “I thought you were staying in Dublin tonight.”

  “That was the plan,” Jack said, squeezing me tight. “But I missed my favorite girl.”

  Jack didn’t kiss me. He just pulled me tight, his neck curving into mine like he’d been gone for twelve months instead of twelve hours. And despite the frigid wind whipping around us, Jack’s warmth permeated even the iciest slivers of my heart.

  After a few moments, he pulled away, gesturing toward the top step. “Sit with me for a minute,” he said. “Too many hours by myself in the car makes my brain go haywire, and I could use a little sanity.”

  “What’s up?”

  Jack leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Emma called this morning while I was driving to Dublin. Her flatmate Niamh got sacked this week, and just like that, she’s moved back home to Belfast.”

  Niamh was one of those Irish names I loved because it wasn’t pronounced one bit like it was spelled – ‘Neeve’ instead of ‘Nee-umh.’ “Well, that’s too bad,” I said, leaning into the stairway railing. “Was Emma upset?”

  “No, actually. She was thrilled. Turns out she’s got a new flatmate in mind.”

  “Who?”

  “You.” Jack ran a lazy thumb along my chin. “There’s no rush. Niamh paid up through April, so Emma said you can take all the time you like making up your mind.”

  As Jack watched me, eyes wide in wonder, it occurred to me that the only thing he knew about my American life was what he’d read in my book. We’d skirted around Ian’s death. He’d never seen a picture of Pete, or Drew. I’d never even mentioned Dan Thomas or the Addison girls.

  I knew that I would never mention their call tonight, or how it bruised my heart to know that Pete was plowing forward with his own grand plan. That for Pete, I represented nothing more than distant memories, while I’d written an entire novel to keep our story alive.

  What a joke. What a ridiculous fool I’d been to think our love had ever mattered.

  Jack tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “I’ll be moving back to Galway myself in the next week or two now that I’m done with Michael’s revisions. We could minimize our carbon footprint if you move north as well. Emma’s apartment is only a seven-minute walk from mine.”

  “Yeah?” I leaned in to his touch. “Well, we are global citizens. Duty to the greater good and all that.”

  “Absolutely. Maybe they’ll nominate us for the Nobel Prize.” He brushed my cheek with his thumb. “And hey, if you’re worried about your income, there are loads of buskers on Quay Street. Maybe you could brush off that Gangnam Girl routine.”

  “Maybe.” I tugged gently at a wonky tuft of his hair that had escaped from his hat. “One last question, though – does Emma make better pancakes than you? Because I didn’t want to say anything on New Year’s Day, but I’m an American, Jack. We like our pancakes the size of a human head, not a coin.”

  “You Yanks are so greedy,” he huffed, pulling me to my feet. And then he kissed me so greedily that I forgot all about Paris and Addison and all the lost dreams in between.

  Well, almost.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Galway is sometimes called the City of Tribes, renowned for its welcoming arms and vibrant, multicultural history.

  And not just its past is colorful – Galway’s the jolliest town you’ve ever seen. One step onto Quay Street and you feel as though you’ve leapt inside a coffee table book. Imagine a higgledy-piggledy lane, where the tops and bottoms of buildings are mismatched in every conceivable color. Like the Emerald City, if it weren’t limited to shades of green.

  Cheery and bright. Just what I needed.

  Emma’s flat was on Kirwan’s Lane, right in the heart of Galway’s Latin Quarter. So even if Galway itself hadn’t charmed me, the Latin Quarter connection to Paris would have done the trick. And in the grand Galwegian tradition of welcoming strangers, Emma Kelly had plugged me into her world like I was the missing piece of a puzzle. At twenty-nine, Emma was the same age Ian would have been by now, which might explain why she already felt like a sister.

  It didn’t hurt that she made me enormous pancakes the first Saturday I lived in her flat.

  “It’s gorgeous, this lunacy between you and Jack,” Emma said as the two of us drank coffee together after our carb-laden feast. “I don’t think he’s stopped smiling since Christmas Eve.”

  “Good,” I said dreamily. “Because neither have I.”

  “Maeve and I knew something was up when he holed himself away on Christmas Day scouring the internet for any sign of you. And at Christmas dinner, he pummeled my parents with questions about the Juniper House and its new owners.”

  “Really?” A warm glow spread over me. “That’s adorable.”

  “Why do you think we stalked you on St. Stephen’s Day?” Emma sighed, twirling her long blond hair into funny ringlets. “You two give me hope for my own life. Honestly, I’ve never seen Jack like this since…”

  “Hannah?”

  “Oh, you had to go and say her name,” Emma muttered, hopping up to refill her coffee cup. “Jack’s told you about Little Miss Evil Eye, has he?”

  He really hadn’t. Nearly everything I knew about Hannah was something I’d deduced by studying the character Claire in his book. But other than that, the only thing I knew was that real-life Hannah worked at some fancy Dublin consulting firm. At least, that’s what her Facebook profile claimed.

  Yes, I had stalked her. As his reader, I needed to know. As his new girlfriend? Ditto.

  Emma took my silence as confirmation and huffed. Loudly. “This Claire girl he dreamed up in his book is nothing like her insipid real-life counterpart, of that you may be sure.”

  “Oh, come on, Emma. Surely Jack got something right.”

  “I suppose the way he described her physical qualities may have bordered on accurate.” She threw her curls over her shoulder. “She’s quite a bit shorter than he portrayed her in the book, but all that business about her ‘curly chestnut hair’ and those ‘dark eyes that danced?’ Accurate. Though I’m not sure why he called her cheeks or lips rosy. When they were in school, she always looked like she’d just walked out of a rave. Black is the new black and all that nonsense.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “Your brother would be proud to know his words stuck in your brain so well.”

  “Can I help it if he got all the right-brained talent in the family?” Emma threw a pillow at me. “Trust me, Meredith. Don’t be fooled by ‘Claire.’ She’s a construct of my brother’s imagination. Maeve and I never liked Hannah from the moment she stepped foot in our house.”

  “Why not?”

  Emma looked into the middle distance. “You know those people who never looked mussed about, no matter how far they’ve traveled? That is Hannah. Plus, she has that mystique no man can resist. She’s got just enough expression in her face that you believe she’s let you in on some secret. Except it isn’t true. She’s only drawn you further into her web of lies.”

  “I get that.” My mind wandered to Kate Maher, an ache creeping into my chest as those final weeks’ memories rushed back to me. “Your sisterly warning bells went off?”

  “More like storm sirens, but yes. Hannah O’Connell is a manipulative sorceress, and any person who thinks otherwise will quickly find out that I’m right. From the second he laid eyes on her, poor Jack was cursed.”

  “You don’t have to say this because I’m the new girlfriend, Emma. Everyone has a first love.”

  “Yes, but not everyone has a Hannah.” Emma rolled her eyes. “If only my brother had gone to university in Cork, or Galway, or even to Limerick. But he had to be the brightest of us all and get accepted
to Trinity College. Dublin – where men’s hearts get ripped from their chests.”

  “I take it you don’t believe in true love?”

  “You call it true love, I call it youthful nonsense. Every first-year bloke at Trinity College was obsessed with Hannah O’Connell. Jack was simply one among many who fell victim to her wily ways. Pure vixen, that one.”

  “You don’t think she loved Jack? Not even a little bit?”

  Emma narrowed her eyes at me. “No, I do not. Jack’s the most cautious of us all, probably because he’s had a lifetime to observe his sisters’ shenanigans. We Kelly girls do not make wise choices, Meredith Sullivan. You remember that our Maeve used to snog your Kieran, don’t you?”

  “Please never call him my Kieran again, but yes, I’ve heard about the snogging.”

  “Right,” Emma said, lifting an eyebrow at me. “Anyway, Jack’s always been reserved – the sort of boy you’d find curled up on the grass, his school uniform unkempt, reading the same book for the eighteenth time just because he loved some obscure minor character. He lives in a dream world. But when your head’s in the clouds, drunken snogging at a Samhain party can feel like insta-love at an enchanted ball. I’m not sure anything Jack felt was real.”

  “Head in the clouds, huh? Very serious condition.” I grinned, sipping my coffee. “What Jack called love, you call hormones?”

  “Exactly. Though I suppose Hannah and Jack did stay together long enough for her to visit Doolin the week before Christmas. Jack was so chuffed to parade her around the village that he barely noticed the rest of us existed. And then the inevitable happened: a couple of days after Christmas, Hannah called Jack crying. Life’s too short, blah dee blah blah. Love only brings pain, et cetera, et cetera. Complete rubbish.”

  Exactly like he’d described in the book, minus the rubbish. “So Jack was crushed?”

  Emma’s face went pale. “He even drove up to Donegal to win her back, I guess, but when he came home, he refused to say a single word about what happened. To this day, I can never hear that maudlin Pogues’ song Lorelei without bursting into tears. Do you know it?”