Free The Bridge by Karen Kingsbury Page A

wanted to tell him he was wrong. Because Ryan was already moving on from her. He would marry his Southern belle and Molly would find her place in his past, a distant memory. This wasn’t the time. “We’ll be friends?”
    Again he waited, but a broken smile tugged at his lips, and he shrugged. “I guess so.” He exhaled in a rush. “The truth is, I’m too busy to date.”
    “Exactly.” Molly flipped her blond hair over her shoulder. “That’s what I mean. It just isn’t right. You know, between us.”
    She convinced him with little effort, and six months later, Preston and her father helped unveil the Allen Foundation, a charity that initially brought music to orphaned children and eventually expanded to include the shelter for abandoned animals. From the first day of its existence, Molly threw herself into the foundation. The work had a healing effect on her soul. Somehow, when she was teaching a forgotten third-grader how to play the violin, she could keep from spending every waking hour wondering about her dream of the philharmonic and her thoughts about Ryan, the way she still longed for him. The way she hated him for rejecting her.
    Every now and then she went to the Christian church down the street. She hoped the key to restoration lay somewhere between the altar and the doors. The pastor talked about hope and redemption andGod, the giver of second chances. Though she liked the peace she felt there, in the end she walked out of the service missing Ryan.
    She believed the message. Only God could have given her a second chance with Ryan Kelly.
    Three years later, with her father still harping on her to take the reins of the business, a heart attack caught up with him at a gaming table in Las Vegas. A year after they buried him, her mother died after a quick fight with cancer, and Molly couldn’t get out of San Francisco fast enough.
    Preston took over her father’s business, and Molly moved the Allen Foundation to Portland. She began playing violin for a local theater company, and she forced her heart to move on from Nashville and Belmont and every memory of Ryan. It didn’t work, of course. Not after she got settled in the Northwest and not after she found new friends and new ways to spend her free time. The memories never died. But once every twelve months, on Black Friday, she gave herself permission to go back, to relive that happiest time when all the world stood still, and to find herself again in that late-spring starry night with Ryan
    Black Friday and once in a while on a rainy jogthrough Portland the day after. When she couldn’t quite return from the trip back to what once seemed so real. When she couldn’t convince herself he wasn’t waiting for her at The Bridge. When she missed him so much she could hardly breathe.
    The way she felt now.

C HA P T E R  S I X

T he hissing was getting louder.
    Charlie felt like he had invisible demons on his shoulders, vicious, threatening, murderous demons, and in the last few days, their voices had gotten so loud he could barely concentrate, barely hold a conversation. He parked his ’98 Chevy on the curb outside The Bridge, gathered the mail from the front seat, and went inside. Donna was out getting milk and eggs when the carrier came, so he decided to bring it here to open. As if maybe that might help sway the contents to be a little more favorable. The snow from Thanksgiving weekend had melted, but last night another storm had dumped four inches across middle Tennessee. The ground was slippery as he made his way inside.
    What’s the point, Charlie Barton? He could almostsense the evil laughter in the empty storefront, the sense of despair so great it nearly consumed him. You already know what the mail’s going to say. More bad news. Just toss it in the trash and drive off a cliff. You’re worthless, a failure, just like your dad predicted .
    “No.” His response was audible, and it startled him. That’s not true. I won’t believe that .