“Couldn’t really tell you,” he said over the rattle of the truck. “Haven’t been in a couple of years. I mean, I heard stuff, but I don’t compete anymore.”

“Aha,” she said in a way that told him she already knew that. “Why not?”

“No time, once my business took off. Summer is the busy season.” He parked by the largest barn, which the city rented from Loughlin to store everything for the games.

“You look like you work out, like you could still throw.”

He turned to her sharply and her gaze skittered away from his arms.

“Maybe,” he said with an amused quirk to his mouth, not indicating which statement he was addressing.

She blushed, and at first he didn’t recognize it, since it was so unusual for her. “Aimee said you won the overall three years in a row while I was at college.”

His eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror, to the expanse of field spreading within that small rectangle. He could still hear everything Jen had described in her memories, but underneath that, even stronger in his senses, came the sound of the laughter and ball-busting between competitors, his longtime throwing buddies. He could still feel the power and exhilaration as his muscles worked and threw the various heavy implements. And if he turned his head just so, he could still see Da, sitting on the edge of the athletic field border, Jen at his ankles.

“I did,” he said, then he parked and got out of the truck.

Jen slid out after a second or two, having to use the running board to step down. “Let me ask you, did you ever throw at the bigger games across the state?”

“For a couple of years. Much tougher competition, took me away from work too much. The AD’s a good friend of mine.”

“AD?”

“Athletic Director. Handles all the heavy events at each games.”

“Ah.” She hoisted that giant purse higher up on her shoulder and turned in a circle, her lips together, assessing.

Not for the first time, he saw what she was seeing: an oddly shaped patch of semiflat land, riddled with holes and dirt patches and weeds, dotted with outbuildings that maybe at one time might have been handsome stables for 4-H livestock shows or other events that might have drawn crowds from all over New England. Now they tilted to one side or another, their wood walls weathered, creeping vines covering any sort of character.

He pointed to the biggest barn. “This is where they keep all the stuff for the games. The tents and tables, the big castle and stuff.”

She turned to him, eyebrow lifted. “I’m sorry. Castle?”

He wiped at the corner of his mouth and glanced away. “Eight or nine years ago DeeDee made this huge fake castle. It looked like a kid’s art project. I think it was supposed to give authenticity or something.”

Jen looked horrified, covering her mouth with a hand, then recovered quickly. “Did the attendees like it?”

“Maybe the first year.”

“And then?”

“Then it turned into a cartoon, and the non-local attendees all but ran across state.”

“See? You did know how it’s changed.”

“Maybe a bit.”

She dug into her bag, her whole arm disappearing, and pulled out a small key ring. “Let’s go take a look.”

After it was unlocked, he lugged open the barn door on dry and screeching rails. She set down her expensive-looking purse right there in the dirt and edged deeper into the barn. Leith followed, popping open a stubborn crate or moving the bigger ones when she couldn’t do it herself and asked for his help.

She was talking to herself, as he’d spied her doing last night through the kitchen window. She was utterly absorbed, her hands moving like she was conversing with a colleague. There was something endearing about it, but something also equally frustrating, because she wasn’t back in some office in New York. She was in a barn. In Gleann. With him. And though he wasn’t expecting a laughfest or the immediate comfort they’d had ten years ago, he didn’t think he’d be on her pay-no-mind list.

She was perusing the back corner when she made a sound of surprise.

“What is it?” he called.

“Come take a look.”

He wove around disorganized piles of, well, crap to join her in the corner. There, tucked between some crates, was a dirty blanket, filthy pillow, a red baseball cap with a partially unraveled potato chip logo, and an empty pack of cigarettes.

“Homeless person?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe.” The valley did have a few.

She wandered back to her purse and pulled out a slim, light laptop, plopping it down on a nearby crate. He liked the way she curled her hair behind her ear and tilted her head so it wouldn’t hang in her face. He liked how the movement exposed her neck. He even liked her animated expressions as her fingers flew across the keyboard.

Singularly focused, that was Jen. And right now, her focus wasn’t anywhere near him. Not that he’d expected it to be.

He leaned his back against the barn door and turned his head to look out at the field again. That ragged expanse of grass and gravel cupped many of his memories in its dips and rises, but perhaps none as strong as Jen’s last night in Gleann. It had been a cloudy, hot night, and they’d spread a blanket right there in the center, where no house or town lights reached. Just them.

“Can I come say goodbye before I leave tomorrow?”

Her words struck his back as he stomped across the fairgrounds, the Cadillac parked crookedly on the other side of the gate.

“Don’t bother,” he shouted into the darkness. “Sounds like you’re taking care of that tonight.”

Maybe that’s why he’d never been able to give his heart away to anyone else over the past ten years: because it was still here where Jen had smacked it down, and every time someone walked or drove across the field, they ground it deeper into the dirt.

Since he’d steered her through the fairground gates, she hadn’t even looked in the direction of that scene. Not even a single glance. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. Once upon a time he’d been the one to start everything, and look how they’d ended up. Besides, did it even matter anymore?

Leaving the laptop as though she’d heard his thoughts, she walked past him out of the barn. She stood staring out at the empty fairgrounds for what seemed like an hour. His heart picked up its rhythm. He couldn’t see her face and he was dying to see her reaction, to watch the memories come back to her, but he didn’t want to seem obvious.

When she turned around with her brow wrinkled, her breath hitched as though she was preparing to say something. He pushed away from the door, expectant.

Instead, she circled around him, heading in the opposite direction of that fateful patch of grass. She peered around the corner of the barn, to where a narrow drive shot past the splintered, angled posts of Loughlin’s cattle pasture and emptied into the vast, empty parking lot surrounding the vacant Hemmertex building.

She turned back around, her eyes as brilliant as the grass. “What do you know about the Hemmertex land over there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does Loughlin own that, too?”

He looked over at Loughlin’s rotting fences and decaying properties. “No, he sold that parcel. I know the company who owns it now; it’s not Hemmertex.”

“You do?”

“Um, yeah.” He cringed. “Don’t be influenced by what you see now, but I did all that landscaping.”

Her eyes popped wide and he caught a faint smile as she turned back around to survey the work he’d done—and that had since gone to weed and overgrowth—years and years ago. Sweeping lawns surrounded the building. The CEO had once thrown company picnics there. Leith had constructed a small amphitheater near the cafeteria door, where on some Fridays there had been musicians. Chris had played his fiddle there once or twice.

“I’m good,” he felt the need to add. “Better than corporate, better than that. Go take a look at some of the huge homes up in the hills, if you want.”