looked up then and met it head-on. “Actually, I can’t. You see, I know most of these people as individuals. I know Sam Crawford, who works in your finishing department. He has a wife with MS and three children he’s somehow managing to raise while working and taking care of her. I know Milly Thomsen, who works in the front office. She’s supporting herself and twin girls after her husband was killed in a logging accident last year. I see the individual tragedies that will happen in this town if that factory closes down, and no, I can’t accept the rightness of that. Not if there’s any way at all to avoid it.”
Tommy’s heels thunked against the lower panel of the booth. “I’m sleepy, Mama. Are you done talkin’ bizness?”
“I think we’re just about finished, Tommy,” Jack said, shifting his unreadable gaze from Annie to her son, who was rubbing his eyes with the back of a fist.
Annie put an arm around Tommy’s shoulders, her heavy heart dropping a few more inches. “Thank you for listening. I only wish I could have said something to make you reconsider.”
She got up from the booth then, pulled her wallet from her purse and put a twenty on the table. “Let’s go home, Tommy.”
Tommy blinked with sleepy eyes and said, “You didn’t eat all your pancakes, Mr. Corbin.”
Jack got up and stood politely to the side. “No, I didn’t. I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”
“Well, we’ll be going,” Annie said stiffly, taking Tommy’s hand.
“Good night,” Tommy said.
“Nice to meet you, Tommy.”
“Good night,” Annie said. She led her son back through the restaurant, the weight of failure heavy on her shoulders.
* * *
AFTER LEAVING WALKER’S, Jack followed South Main out of town, winding through the September night, leaving his window cracked to reacquaint himself with the smells of the country. Burning leaves in the front yard of what had once been the old Jefferson house. Corn silage at Saul’s Dairy.
He traveled the last two miles of the secondary road that led to Glenn Hall behind a seen-better-days Ford pickup with a missing taillight and a lopsided bumper, the right side of which nearly touched the pavement every time the driver tapped his brakes.
For once, Jack didn’t mind the pace. His regular life revolved around being in a hurry. Last-minute trips. Nearly missed planes. A new city every week. He’d set his life up that way, and most of the time, it suited him just fine. Slowing down gave a man too much time to think, often enough about things that didn’t bear up under scrutiny. Like where he’d been instead of where he was going. That he couldn’t go back and erase tracks he’d already made. All he could do was point his feet in another direction next time out.
Jack hated letting people down, and it seemed as if lately he’d become an expert at it.
He’d certainly let Annie McCabe down tonight. And he felt like a heel.
Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been as easy as he’d expected it to be. Saying no to a woman with eyes the color of Swiss chocolate and a little boy at her side. It had been the most unconventional business meeting Jack had ever attended.
He didn’t know what he’d expected in Annie, maybe forty-five and frumpy. Nix that image. First glance, nice. Second glance, very nice.
She had the kind of mouth that got him distracted fast. Full lower lip, which she worried with even, white teeth in between the arguments she’d been launching at him with fastball accuracy.
And she’d been married to J. D. McCabe. J.D. had been a couple years older than Jack. Jack had gone to a private school, so their paths rarely crossed. But he remembered J.D. as a guy with a laser-beam smile and more than his share of confidence. He wondered why the idea of Annie with him didn’t quite gel.
The truck in front of him slowed to a crawl, then angled right and rolled off down a gravel driveway, freeing up the road. Jack nudged the accelerator to the floor, suddenly anxious to knock out each of the obligations standing between him and tying up for good these last connections to Macon’s Point.
The Porsche raced up the next hill, rounded a curve, and there it was. Glenn Hall. The car’s headlights arced across two enormous fieldstone columns marking the entrance to the farm his father had left to Daphne Corbin, his second wife. Now Jack’s by default.
He stopped and got