The Bridge (4 page)

Like that, their dreams were set. They promised to push each other, to never settle for anything but the place where their hearts led. They took turns commuting to Belmont, and they shared a ride every day from the beginning. Ryan would pull his truck up at the corner of McGavock Farms and Murray, where she’d be waiting, out of sight of the staff. He’d take her to school and then to The Bridge when classes were done.

Homework wasn’t all they did at The Bridge. They also found books, classics that spoke deeply to them.
Gone with the Wind
and her favorite, Charlotte Brontë’s
Jane Eyre
. From the beginning Molly related to the heroine and her determination to do the right thing, even at the cost of love. They read
Jane Eyre
aloud to each other, and once in a while, on the drive to The Bridge, they would quote lines to each other.

“‘I’m asking what Jane Eyre would do to secure my happiness,’” Ryan would say in his best English accent, quoting Rochester.

“‘I would do anything for you, sir,’” she would
quote Jane in her own Victorian accent, stifling the giggles that always came when they were together. “‘Anything that was right.’”

When they weren’t quoting Brontë’s novel, they sang along with the radio and talked about their classes and dreamed of the future. For two wonderful years they never talked about the one thing that seemed so obvious at the time, the thing that could’ve made all the difference. They never talked about whether their friendship was a cover for the obvious.

That maybe they were in love with each other.

As the video wound down and Sam curled up on the floor beside her, as her tears slid down her cheeks the way they did every time she watched the film, Molly couldn’t help but think the one thing she would always think this time of year.

She should’ve said something.

C HA P T E R  T W O

C
harlie Barton sank into the worn refinished leather sofa and looked around the empty walls of The Bridge. Even stripped bare, the place was home. But for how much longer? He closed his eyes and tried to still his trembling hands, tried to find a reason to believe again.

Please, God . . . show me the way. I’m out of answers
.

He waited, but there was no response, no whispered words of hope or gentle reminders or inspiring Scripture. Nothing.
Are You there, God? Are You really there?
With all of his strength, he fought the ocean of tears rising up inside his soul. He was out of money, and the latest loan hadn’t come through. He couldn’t buy books to stock his store without at least a line of credit. And no books meant no store.

Another wave of despair washed up against the shore of his soul. All he could see was the way Donna had looked at him when he left home an hour ago—like even
she’d
lost faith in him.

After thirty years in downtown Franklin, Charlie understood the gravity of the situation. Like so many bookstores across the country, his was about to become a casualty. Not because of e-readers—Charlie had enough customers who wanted a real book in their hands. But because of something totally out of his control.

The hundred-year flood.

Charlie opened his eyes and leaned forward, digging his elbows into his knees and placing his hands over his weathered face. The floodwaters had come swift and relentless, nearly twenty inches of rain in two days. He hadn’t packed up the books. There hadn’t been time. If he’d known how bad it would get, he might’ve come here anyway, risking his life if that’s what it took. By the time he thought about clearing out the store, he would’ve needed a boat to get to The Bridge.

The water had broken through the windows and knocked over shelves, taking even the books that
might’ve been out of reach of the rising flood. Every book. Every single book was either swept away or left in the corners of the store, mushy piles of pulp. Only the furniture remained, and it was too damaged to save. His insurance policy on the store’s contents didn’t cover a tenth of what he’d invested in books. No, the flood left nothing. With a clean sweep, it removed all that Charlie Barton had spent his life working for, everything that had mattered to him.

Everything but his faith in God and his lovely Donna.

He looked up and squinted through the fading light out the storefront window. What would Franklin be without a bookstore? Without a place where people could come to learn about history and explorations, fiction and political figures? Where would they go to talk about their ideas and experience the feel of a book in their hands? The weight of the binding and smell of the ink, the feel of the paper between their fingers and the sound of turning pages.

A real book.

Charlie gritted his teeth and worked the muscles in his jaw. This wasn’t the end. He closed his eyes again. God wouldn’t have brought him this far to see him
fail, right? Certainly not. He ran through the options one more time, and his burst of confidence dimmed. He hadn’t told Donna about the loan.

The bells on the front door jingled and he looked up. The sign out front said he was reopening on December 8—not ideal but still well before Christmas. The bells on the front door and the worn sofa were the only purchases he’d made so far. He watched as the door opened and Donna walked in. At fifty-six, she was still pretty, still petite, with a girlish face that he loved more with each passing year.

“Charlie.” She came to him, her expression weary but patient. “How long are you going to sit here?”

“Until they make me leave.” His smile felt heavy, and his eyes blurred, the unshed tears finding a way. “You didn’t have to come.”

“I did.” She helped him to his feet and took him in her arms. “The bank called.”

His heart sank. He’d wanted to tell her himself. He drew back and searched her eyes. “What’d they say?”

“The line of credit was denied.”

Charlie lowered his gaze to his old brown loafers, the ones he’d worn to The Bridge every day for five years. The business had never been lucrative. He and
Donna had sacrificed to keep the place, but neither of them would’ve changed a thing. The Bridge gave them a purpose. He was quiet for a long while.

“Donna . . .” His voice cracked. He looked at her, his heart aching with sadness. “It was worth it, right?”

“What?” She had hold of his hands now, her eyes kinder than he deserved.

“The Bridge, the bookstore . . . all the years.” He touched her hair, her cheek. “You never had nice things. We never traveled.”

She looked at him for a long time and then put her hands on his shoulders. “Our time here, it was never about the money. It was about the people.” She pointed out the front window. “There’s not a person in Franklin who hasn’t been touched by your books and your kindness, Charlie Barton.”

He let the words soak in and then pulled her close once more. “I don’t deserve you.” They stayed that way for half a minute, rocking slightly to the sound of their beating hearts and the passing cars and pedestrians outside. Finally, he took a step back and shrugged. “What should we do?”

For the first time since she walked into the store, her face clouded. “That’s just it, Charlie.” She crossed
her arms and turned her back to him, her eyes on the empty spaces. It took her nearly a minute to face him again. “No matter how many people you’ve touched, they won’t pay the bills. Your customers can’t buy books we don’t have.”

He waited, hoping she had something else, some way out that he’d missed.

Instead she looked down for a long moment. When she lifted her eyes to his, there was a resolution in her face he’d never seen before. “It’s time, Charlie. You had a good run. Three decades.” She shook her head. “But no more. You need to let it go.”

Panic crowded in around him and put its cold fingers against his throat. “I’m a bookseller, Donna.” His voice was pinched, his heart pounding. “I don’t know what else to do.”

She shook her head, glancing about as if the answer might be somewhere on the barren walls. “You know retail.” Pain colored her eyes. “Costco or one of the supermarkets. Someone has to be hiring.”

Charlie shuddered at the picture. He was almost sixty, his hair whiter than the snow outside. Pushing carts at Costco? Bagging groceries at Kroger? How could that be his swan song when he had planned to
work at The Bridge until God took him home? He gave her a weak smile. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You have to close the store. We can’t afford the lease.” Her eyebrows raised, she studied him, searching his intentions. “You know that. Right?”

He couldn’t have felt more pressure if the roof collapsed and pinned him to the floor. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he wiped it with the back of his hands. He felt a hundred years old. “I have to do something. I know that.”

A long pause followed while she watched him. “I’m going home.” She held her hand out. “Come with me?”

“Not yet.” He shook his head, and again panic breathed its icy breath down his back. The store
was
his home, his family. Leaving it now without an answer was like putting his mother out in the cold and wishing her the best of luck. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t promise anything other than the obvious. “I have to think.”

A tired sigh sounded in her throat and she put her hand alongside his face. “I love you, Charlie. It’s not your fault. Bookstores everywhere are dealing with this.” She smiled at him. “I believe in you.”

“I know.” He gave her a brave smile and a look that said he’d be fine, that she could go and he would find the answers somehow. The truth was, Donna didn’t understand completely. This wasn’t any other bookstore. It was Franklin’s bookstore. A place that defined downtown. If people knew he was in trouble, they’d help, right? They’d come together and do whatever it took to save The Bridge.

Donna kissed him good-bye, pulled up the hood of her winter coat, and headed out into the cold. When he was alone again, Charlie thought about the town coming together. He walked slowly to the window and watched Donna hurry around the corner, out of sight. On both sides of the street, people were walking and laughing and drifting in and out of the small boutiques along the avenue, shopping bags draped on their arms.

Who was he kidding?

People rallying around a bookstore? Things like that only happened in the movies. If The Bridge closed, people wouldn’t notice. They would move on and find their books somewhere else, same as any other city in America that lost a bookstore this year. They’d jump on Amazon or get a Kindle for Christmas,
and Franklin would go on as if nothing had happened. And that would be that. Charlie Barton and The Bridge, and every memory of anything wonderful that happened here, forever drowned in the flood.

He moved back from the window and shuffled to the checkout counter. The structure was built-in, so it had withstood the rains, and with it, the one item he intended to save. He opened the swollen top drawer and carefully, gingerly, pulled out the scrapbook. Water had risen past the counter and the drawers, but somehow, the scrapbook wasn’t destroyed. He ran his hand over the stained canvas cover and the blurred image of The Bridge, the way it had looked in 1972—when Charlie first leased the old house and opened the shop.

The picture on the front of the book was unrecognizable, but between the covers, the photographs remained remarkably unscathed. Charlie opened it and lingered on the first spread. The scrapbook was from a widow named Edna Carlton who had lost her husband in the Vietnam War. In her loneliness and grief, Edna had found her way to The Bridge. “The books, the coffee, the conversation, all of it has been wonderful,” she had written across the top of the first page.
“The Bridge has given me a second chance at life. Fill this book with the stories of old souls like me. People who sometimes need a place like this to bridge yesterday and tomorrow. People looking for a second chance. Thank you, Charlie.”

Below the inscription, a photo showed Edna Carlton sitting demurely in the upright chair that once stood at the far corner of the store. She held a used copy of
Little Women
in her hands, a story that helped her get through her husband’s death. Charlie couldn’t read the title of the book. The picture wasn’t that clear. Quite simply, he remembered Edna and the book that had spoken so deeply to her.

The way he remembered all of them, generations of regulars who had found a home away from home at The Bridge.

With great reverence, he thumbed through the book, stopping at the photo of the businesswoman Matilda Owens, who had used The Bridge to study for her law degree in the nineties. Last Charlie heard, Matilda had made partner at a law firm off Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Next were a banker and his wife, who had used The Bridge as a romantic hideaway where they often read to each other. Charlie could
picture them, whispering beautiful passages from
Wuthering Heights
, together at the end of the old worn sofa that used to sit near The Bridge’s fireplace, finding their way back to the feelings that marked the start of their own love story.