Free Return to Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs

mountaineers in Colorado. Or a rock group in
Amsterdam. Yeah, that’d be awesome. Mickey Flick was known to work closely with
some of the biggest names in the music business. His last hit had involved a
world-class heavy metal star’s collaboration with a classical pianist,
culminating in a triumphant performance in Carnegie Hall.
    Zach couldn’t wait to see what was in store for him. And at the
end of it all, he’d finally have the seed money to start living his dream.
    The people in the café carried on, oblivious. Just for a
second, Zach felt a twinge of frustration. He wanted to call somebody, tell
somebody, share this amazing news. And the person he most wanted to share it
with was the last one who wanted to hear.

Part Three

M UST -D O L IST ( REVISED , AGAIN )

    sublet
apartment
    return
library books
    repay
student loans
    realign
priorities
    really
fall in love (no, seriously)

    What we remember from childhood we remember forever—permanent
ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.
    —C YNTHIA O ZICK , A MERICAN WRITER , B .
1928

Chapter Five
    Sonnet awakened as the train from the city lurched into
the station at Avalon. Just for a moment, she felt fuzzy and disoriented, her
sleepy mind flipping through all her many homecomings. As a new, homesick
college student, she’d arrived with a sense of relief, eager to be enfolded in
the comfort of her mother’s arms. During her various internships overseas, she’d
visited less often, but always with appreciation. Yet as time went on, the town
where she’d been born and raised seemed smaller and smaller to her, with less
and less to tie her to the pretty lakeside hamlet. While her world was
expanding, Avalon remained the same.
    She felt strange about this homecoming, for a lot of reasons.
It made her seem like she was going backward into a world where she no longer
fit or belonged.
    Grabbing her bags from the luggage rack, she stepped down to
the platform and looked around. Same little burg, with its picturesque square,
the old brick buildings huddled shoulder-to-shoulder, their striped and
scalloped awnings shadowing the shops and businesses she’d walked past every day
as she was growing up.
    She noticed a bit of commotion on another car as a group of
people got off, lugging hard cases of equipment and rolls of cable on hand
trucks. There were a couple of guys and women, dressed mostly in black, looking
around as if they’d stepped off a spacecraft onto an alien planet. One of the
guys wore a black baseball cap with the logo MFP, and the equipment boxes were
marked Mickey Flick Productions.
    Sonnet thought they might be a camera crew. Back when her
mother served as the town mayor, she’d set up a volunteer film commission to
attract business. A place like Avalon didn’t see much action, but every once in
a while a crew came through to create footage of the quaint town, or of fall
foliage or sometimes aerial views of the area. It was a place that seemed frozen
in time, achingly pretty, useful for establishing a historic or generic small
town setting. A few years back, there had been a public television documentary
on the annual Christmas pageant that had created quite a stir.
    The PBS camera crew hadn’t looked like this bunch, however.
These people had that edgy East or West Coast look. They consulted smartphones
and lit up cigarettes before moving en masse to a large panel van parked in the
commuter lot.
    Seeing a camera crew reminded her of Zach Alger. He was the
last person she wanted to think about, but she couldn’t help herself. God, those
kisses. Those hands. The things he’d whispered in her ear. Even now, she felt an
unbidden spasm of desire at the mere thought of him. It was ridiculous, feeling
turned on by a man she had no business thinking about.
    Squaring her shoulders, she took out her new phone and sent a
text to Max Bellamy, her stepbrother, who had offered to pick her up. In the parking lot , he texted back. Need help with bags?