CHAPTER SIX

      RACHELLE’S FIRST DAY IN Gold Creek wasn’t all that productive. She’d spent hours unpacking and settling into the cottage where she’d grown up, the cottage her mother and Heather still owned. At present no one was renting the little bungalow, so Rachelle and Java moved in, cleaned the place and fought back memories that seemed to hang like cobwebs in the corners.

       It was night before she donned her jacket and drove into town. Her first stop was the high school. She parked in front of the building and ignored the race of her heart.

       Red brick and mortar, washed with exterior lights, Tyler High rose two stories against a star-spangled backdrop. The sharp outline of a crescent moon seemed to float on a few gray wisps of clouds that had collected in the sky.

       Memories, old and painful, crept into her mind and she wondered again about the wisdom of returning to a town where she’d been born, raised and humiliated.

      Steady, she told herself, and plunged her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. Muted music and laughter, seeping through the open doors of the Buckeye Restaurant and Lounge, rode upon an early summer breeze, diminishing the chorus of crickets and the soft hoot of an owl hidden high in the branches of the ancient old sequoias that guarded the entrance of the school.

       She remembered the taunts of the other kids—the clique of girls who would giggle as she passed and the boys who would lift their brows in invitation. Her senior year had crawled by and when it was over, she’d worked the summer at a newspaper in Coleville and started college the following September. She’d refused to think about Jackson, for, after eight months of thinking he would return for her, she’d finally accepted the cold, hard fact that he didn’t care for her.

       Harold Little, her mother’s second husband and a man she could hardly stomach, had lent her money to get through school. After four years at Berkeley, long hours working on a small, local paper and few dates, she’d graduated. With her journalism degree and her work references, she’d found a job at one small paper, and another, finally landing a job at the Herald. Her column had been well received and finally she felt as if she’d made it.

       But not as big as had Jackson. Even now, standing in front of the school, she remembered the first time she’d seen him on television. His face was barely a flash on the screen as the camera panned for his famous client, a famous soap-opera actress whose real life paralleled the story line on her daytime drama.

       Rachelle had dropped the coffee cup she’d been carrying from her kitchen to the den. The television set, usually on, was muted, but she couldn’t forget Jackson’s strong features, his flashing dark eyes, his rakish, confident smile, the expensive cut of his suit.

       She’d heard that he’d become a lawyer and it hadn’t taken him long to move to New York and earn a reputation. But seeing his face on the television screen had stunned her, and in a mixture of awe and disgust, she’d watched the screen and mopped the coffee from the floor. From that point on, she’d kept up with his career and wondered at his chosen path.

       He’d never contacted her in twelve years. He probably didn’t even remember her name, she thought now, alone in the dark. And yet she’d promised her editor she’d try to interview him by calling him in New York. What a joke!

      * * *

      GOLD CREEK HADN’T changed much.

       Jackson drove his rental car through the night-darkened streets. Yes, the homes sprawled closer to the eastern hills than they had twelve years before and a new strip mall had been added to the north end of town. A recently built tritheater boasted the names of several second-run movies and, as expected, a lot of the real estate and businesses were tagged by the name Fitzpatrick.

       “Some things never change,” he said, thinking aloud as he passed yet another home offered for sale by Fitzpatrick Realty.

       Fitzpatricks had always run the town. The first Fitzpatrick had discovered gold here and his descendants, too, had made a profit from the natural resources the hills offered and from the strong backs of other able bodies in town. From the early 1900s, when Fitzpatrick Logging had opened up wide stands of fir and pine in the foothills surrounding Gold Creek until now, Fitzpatrick Logging had been a primary employer of Gold Creek. Millions of board feet of lumber had translated into hundreds of thousands of dollars for the first timber baron in the county’s history, and George Fitzpatrick had become a millionaire. His wealth had been passed on from generation to generation, spreading like some unstoppable disease until the majority of townspeople worked for Thomas Fitzpatrick, grandson of George and father of Roy, the boy Jackson had been accused of murdering twelve years before.

       Fitzpatrick Logging. Fitzpatrick Realty. Fitzpatrick Hardware. Fitzpatrick Development. Fitzpatrick Building Supplies. Everything in the town seemed to be a shrine to the influence and wealth of the Fitzpatrick family.

       Jackson’s hands tightened over the wheel of the Buick as he cruised past a local pizza parlor, thankfully named Lanza’s. As far as Jackson knew, Thomas Fitzpatrick and his ancestors didn’t have any Italian blood running through their veins.

       He guided the Buick to a stop at the park situated in the middle of town. This little scrap of ground, less than an acre, was a far cry from Central Park in the heart of Manhattan, but Gold Creek was no New York City, he thought with a trace of sarcasm. Despite its problems, New York held more appeal.

       Jackson climbed out of the car and stretched his legs, eyeing the surroundings. The hair lifted on his arms as he spied a gazebo that stood in the center of the green where several concrete paths met. The gazebo was larger than the lattice structure he remembered at the Fitzpatrick summer estate, but still, his skin crawled.

       The walkways, illuminated by strategically placed lampposts, ran in six directions, winding through the trees and playground equipment of one square block of Gold Creek. The grass was already turning brown, and the area under the swings and teeter-totters was dusty. Flowers bloomed profusely, their petals glowing in the white incandescence of the street lamps. A few dry leaves, the precursors of autumn, rustled as they blew across the cracked concrete.

       But the air was different from the atmosphere in New York City.