Let It Be (Butler, Vermont #6) - Marie Force Page 0,15

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