Jeremy and Lexie were sitting together, cuddled beneath a blanket, staring down at the town below. It was Thursday evening, three days after Jeremy’s return to Boone Creek¹. The white and yellow lights of the town, interspersed² with occasional reds and greens, seemed to be flickering, and Jeremy could see plumes³ of smoke rising from chimneys. The river flowed black like liquid coal, mirroring the sky above. Beyond it, the lights from the paper mill spread in all directions, illuminating⁴ the railroad trestle.

Over the past couple of days, he and Lexie had spent a lot of time talking. She apologized for lying about Rodney and confessed that driving away as Jeremy stood on the gravel⁵ road at Greenleaf had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. She described the misery⁶ of the week that they’d been apart, a sentiment that Jeremy echoed. For his part, he told her that while Nate wasn’t thrilled with his move, his editor at Scientific American was willing to let him work from Boone Creek, provided he made it back to New York regularly.

Jeremy didn’t mention that Doris had come to visit him in New York, however; on his second evening back in town, Lexie had brought him over to Doris’s for dinner, and Doris had pulled him aside and asked him not to say anything.

“I don’t want her thinking that I was interfering⁷ in her life,” she said, her eyes shining. “Believe it or not, she thinks I’m pushy⁸.”

Sometimes he found it hard to believe that he was really here with her; on the other hand, it was hard to believe that he’d ever left in the first place. Being with Lexie felt natural, as if she were the home he’d been seeking. Although Lexie seemed to feel the same way, she wouldn’t let him stay at her house, insisting, “I wouldn’t want to give the folks around here something to gossip about.” Nevertheless, he felt reasonably comfortable at Greenleaf, even if Jed still hadn’t cracked a smile.

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