“Right, right. I’ll stop by the station. Now get out of here and go plan your next garden. I have wine to check.” He paused. “Thanks for godfather. That means a lot, Faith. Tell Levi, okay?”
“I love you,” she said, giving him a hug.
“Love you, too.” She always smelled like vanilla cookies or something, his youngest sister, and Jack hugged her back, the blurry, floating feeling fading a little.
Faith pulled back. “Oh! The baby just kicked. He knows his uncle Jack is here.” She put his hand on her stomach, and Jack felt a strange, firm, wavelike motion.
His nephew. A little boy who’d dig in the dirt and play with trucks and learn to drive the harvester years before he could drive a car, and when he did drive a car, his uncle Jack would put the fear of God in him, and that kid would never, ever, ever drink and drive and crash—
He removed his hand and cleared his throat. “Got any names picked out yet?”
“No,” she sighed. “Levi says whatever I want is fine, which makes me insane.”
“Heartless bastard.”
“I know. It won’t be John...I’m saving that for you, so you can have John the Fifth. If you ever get married and produce the Holland grandchild. Not that Mrs. J. has been complaining about that or anything. Or Goggy. I was over at Rushing Creek today, and she said, ‘Oh, sure, it’s wonderful that you’re having a baby, Faith, but I want a Holland baby to carry on the family name.’”
“Let’s not forget my superior gene pool,” Jack said. He paused. “But if you want to name the little guy John, go ahead, Faith. Dad would love it.”
“Nope,” she said. “You’re John Noble Holland the Fourth. You get to have Number Five if you want. If you can trick some woman into marrying you, that is.” Then, realizing that perhaps his marital state was a sore subject with his ex-wife in town, she added, “Sorry.”
His heart was beating way, way too fast. “Don’t worry about it. Actually, do worry about it. Make me a cake or something, and I’ll forgive you. Now get out of here. I mean it.”
Because a flashback was coming, and Jack wanted to be alone when it hit.
* * *
ON THE DAY the car went into the lake, Jack had been waiting twenty years to save a life.
For twenty years, he’d never been in quite the right spot at quite the right moment. For twenty years, it seemed like he’d always been five minutes too late or five minutes too early, just missing the chance to help.
For twenty years, he’d had to live with the image of his youngest sister trapped in the crumpled wreck with their mother’s body, and for twenty years, he’d been waiting for the chance to make up for that. Not that the thought made sense—he’d been away in college when his mother had died, but the thought that his little sis had been alone, in shock, with no one to help for more than an hour...that his mother had had no one to hold her hand in her last moment...that no one had come to help for far too long... Of course it left a mark.
From that day on, Jack had been on alert. He joined the navy thinking he might try to become a SEAL, but Uncle Sam had other plans after seeing his test scores, so to the lab he went. It was fine; he still had to train, improved his swimming skills, get advanced scuba licenses—open water diving and specialized rescue, black water search, whatever he could.
But that feeling never went away, even after his service was done.
Every time a car raced past him on the highway at ninety miles an hour, every time he saw a motorcyclist tearing around town without a helmet, the pictures would unfold. The accident. The victims. What he would do, how he would help, how he’d make sure his own pickup truck was pulled safely off the road, how he’d call 911 as he ran, how he’d pull the driver from the car or out of the road and put pressure on the wounds until help came. He had a fire extinguisher in his car (didn’t everyone?) and a window-breaking tool on his key chain, as well as a hammer in the glove box. Flares. A first aid kit, a really good flashlight (batteries changed twice a year), a seat-belt cutter and a blanket.
In the summer if he was down at the lake, he’d count the kids in the water and check to make sure parents were alert and not too engrossed in their books or conversations or phone games. When the flight attendants went over safety procedures, Jack listened, then looked at his fellow passengers and noted who would need help should their plane land on the Hudson or in an Iowa cornfield.
As Honor said, a hobby was a hobby.
Jack put his training to work and became a volunteer rescue diver for the Manningsport Fire Department. He was certified for ice rescue and as a lifeguard. He was an EMT.
And still, he’d never saved a soul. Last spring, when his grandparents’ house had burned down, it was Honor who’d done the heroics; Jack’s house was way up on the ridge, about as far away from the Old House as you could get on Blue Heron land. By the time he’d gotten down there, Honor had already saved their grandmother’s life, with a little help from her fiancé.
But on January 12, Jack had gone down to the dock to take photos. He loved winter, loved the brilliant red sunsets at dusk and the cold wash of the Milky Way at midnight. From here, he could see the Crooked Lake to the east and all the way up to Blue Heron to the west. So around 4:30 p.m., he was taking photos of the fields where the snow and dormant vines stood in stark contrast to each other. The sky over Rose Ridge deepened, promising one of western New York’s famous sunsets. There might even be the aurora borealis later on.
At times like this, the power of the land spoke to him. It wasn’t just the fact that the Holland family had helped found this town, that his ancestors and grandparents and parents had worked this land. It was the area itself: the cold, deep lakes, the gorges and waterfalls, the fertile, rocky soil.
This kind of thing reminded him of how much he had. A family—three married sisters, a niece and a nephew and another on the way. His father and stepmother. A job he loved. His, uh...his cat. His health. All that good stuff.
It was just that lately, Jack had been feeling a little...unfinished.
After twenty years of being a widower, Dad had gotten married last spring. Which was great, because Mrs. Johnson was the world’s finest woman and had been like a surrogate mother since Jack’s mom had died. Pru and Carl had been together for nearly twenty-five years. Honor and Faith both married recently. Goggy and Pops had recently fallen in love after sixty-five cantankerous years of marriage, thanks to the fire.
Jack...Jack had gotten divorced after eight months of marriage.
And then he heard the car. Judging from the sound of the engine, it seemed as if the car was going at least sixty miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone.
He turned away from the water and waited, oddly calm. The car would crash. How could it not, going that fast?
Then again, he’d had that same thought hundreds of times. Maybe thousands.
None of that ever happened, but the instinct—to watch over, pay attention, be alert, be ready—was a reflex. His rational brain knew how unlikely it was that what he feared and watched for would come to pass.
But he looked up the hill anyway. In another
