He supposed he could go into law enforcement like some of his friends had done. He’d heard that Beck was looking to add to the police force, but that didn’t seem like a good fit to him. Dan would jump at the chance to bring him on board at the inn, but he’d already thought that through and dismissed it. He had no desire to run the inn, especially since Dan was so good at it, and Ford didn’t have a clue. It was good that someone in the family shared their father’s love for the old place, though. He appreciated the sense of history there, felt the presence of his ancestors in every one of the rooms. There was something about being part of an unbroken chain that went back so many generations in this town that made you feel grounded, whether or not you wanted to be. In the past, he hadn’t felt the pull quite as much as he did this time around. Of course, he hadn’t been home in a long time, and maybe being a little older he might be more aware of such things.

His feet took him all the way to the end of Hudson, where it dead-ended on Old St. Mary’s Church Road. The carriage house on the Enright property was closed and still, the workmen—and Carly—gone for the weekend, the driveway empty of the cars and pickups that filled it every weekday. He jogged past the house, the mansion that old Curtis had signed over to the town, and kept going until he reached the town square. He stopped for a moment, recalling holidays that had been celebrated there: First Families’ Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day. Halloween parades that had wound through the center of town and ended right here, where prizes for best costume had been given out and photos taken of the winners for the front page of the St. Dennis Gazette. He recalled one year when his mother had dressed the three of them as cowboys in matching outfits, and how Lucy had squawked at having to wear chaps like her brothers and a hat that made her hair go flat on top.

Their grandfather had been alive then, and had taken their picture in front of an old live oak that stood behind the library. Ford walked around the building to see if the tree was still there, and found himself surprisingly disappointed when he realized it had been taken down. He wondered what had happened to that photo.

He resumed jogging, and went straight back onto Charles Street and turned right. He ran past houses he’d known well when he was a child, houses where friends had lived, and he wondered what had happened to them all, where they were now. His best buddy through eighth grade, John-Luc, had lived in the gray clapboard house on the corner—it had been white back then—and Amy Weathers, the class brain, had lived next door. The last time Ford came home, his mother mentioned pointedly and on several occasions that Amy and John-Luc had married, had two children, and were living happily over on Fifth Street in the house they bought from the estate of Mr. Davis, who at one time or another had taught piano to just about every kid in St. Dennis.

There was that chain again. So many people who lived in St. Dennis had families that went back several generations, so your parents knew theirs. Their grandparents had danced at your grandparents’ wedding. Their family albums held photos of some of the people you were descended from, and yours held theirs. It wasn’t something he thought about while he was away, but now that he was here, steeped in it all, he realized he was finding comfort in his own history, and that of his family.

Farther out on Charles Street, the shoulder became more narrow, and the houses farther and farther apart. Up around the big bend was the Madison farm, where Lucy lived with her husband, where they’d raised their family. He felt a stab of something that took him a moment to recognize as envy, which made no sense to him at all.

He crossed the road and took a left onto River Road and ran past Blossoms, where he’d had lunch with Carly, and past the old warehouses that Dallas MacGregor had bought and turned into a film studio. Well below the studio, the lanes narrowed again and the properties were larger and more stately. He ran past several large Victorian homes, the largest of which belonged to Dallas’s great-aunt Berry Eberle, known on the silver screen as Beryl Townsend, who was as colorful a character as any she’d played in films. Still he ran, back toward the center of town, past St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and the First Baptist of St. Dennis, where cars overflowed the parking lots on this Sunday morning. His route took him past the cafés and the shops, past the building that had once belonged to his grandfather, the building that housed the Gazette. There was a light burning on the second floor, and Ford paused before crossing the street. The first-floor door on the side of the building was open, so he trotted up the steps, wondering who had forgotten to turn off the lights and lock the door.

“Hello?” he called from the top of the steps.

There was a shuffling noise coming from the hall, and he rounded the corner to find Ray Shelton, the production manager, coming out of his office.

“Oh, Ford.” The older man smiled with relief. “I couldn’t imagine who … and then I realized I’d left the door … but come in, come in.” He gestured for Ford to follow him. “Have a seat there. Just put those things on the floor …”

Ford leaned against the doorjamb. “I don’t mean to interrupt anything you’re doing, Ray. I just saw a light on and wasn’t sure if it had been left on by mistake, so I thought I’d check.”

“I come in most Sundays.” Ray lowered himself into his worn leather chair. “Oh, heck, I come in every morning. Gives me something to do. I hate to admit that I’m slowing down, but I am. Now it takes me seven days to do what used to take me four. Not complaining, mind you. I understand the alternative to getting old.” He grinned. “How’s your mother doing this week? She driving everyone at the inn crazy?”

“I don’t know about everyone else, but she’d doing a number on me.”

Ray laughed. “She’s something else, that Gracie. I know how happy she is that you came home to take over for her. I have to admit, I was worried.”

“Oh, I’m not taking—”

“You know, this paper’s been around for somethin’ like a hundred and fifty years, give or take. Yes, sir, it’s the voice of St. Dennis. People depend on it for their hard news and their gossip. Folks need both, you know. You can see the history of the entire town played out, right there on the wall of the old conference room. If it happened and was worth talking about, there was a photo on the front page of the Gazette. Don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t stepped in to take ’er over, Ford.” Ray leaned back in his chair. “Maybe one of these days I’ll have time to show you what we do here in production. I won’t be around forever, you know.”

“I thought you had an assistant.”

“I did. He went back to college in the spring, decided he’d rather be an engineer. Heard there was more money in it. Not too many people get rich putting out a weekly newspaper.”

“Maybe you should run an ad, see if you can find someone to give you a hand.” Ford tried to calculate how old Ray must be by now, surely well past retirement age. He had to be almost as old as Grace.

The thought gave him a start. It was still hard to acknowledge that she was aging.

“I’ll run it past your mother when I get a chance, see if she’s all right with bringing in someone.”

Ford made a mental note to mention it when he got back to the inn.

“In the meantime, I have some ads to get ready.” Ray stood.

“Right. Well, I guess I’ll see you later in the week. I’ll have another article for you.”

“Good, good. You’re doing a fine job with those. I know how proud Gracie is. I have to say, I’m looking forward to St. Dennis having a real art center. Yessir, it’s going to be good for the town to have a fine art gallery. There was some talk a few years ago about someone opening one up the street here, but then Clay Madison’s mother bought the storefront and opened that shop that sold sweaters for dogs …” Ray’s voice trailed down the hall.

Ford was almost to the bottom of the steps when he remembered what Ray said about the walls of the old conference room displaying the history of the town. He went back up the steps and walked straight to the front room and opened the door. The air was musty and the layer of dust on the top of the table was clear evidence that it had been a long time since any sort of conference had been held there.

There on the four walls, in dusty frames, hung the front pages of editions long past. There were pages that spoke of national history—from the Hindenburg disaster to Pearl Harbor to the assassination of John Kennedy and the horror of the World Trade Center on 9/11, and natural disasters like Katrina and Sandy—as well as stories that were big local news. There were photos of winners of the Fourth of July sailboat races and of local pageants, and of returning servicemen from World War II. He smiled at the pictures of Brooke in her beauty queen days (LOCAL BEAUTY CROWNED MISS EASTERN SHORE!) and Dallas MacGregor winning her first Academy Award. Ah, and there were the three amigos in their cowboy clothes, he and Dan grinning like fools while a scowling Lucy sat on the ground in front of them, her hat pulled down over her eyes.

He’d gone halfway around the room when he came to a photo of a once-familiar face. He leaned closer to read the caption: Future editor in chief? William T. Ellison, the current editor in chief and owner of the St. Dennis Gazette, shows off his newest grandson, Ford Winston Sinclair, the third child of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Sinclair. “You mark my words, he’s going to follow in my footsteps someday,” Mr. Ellison predicted.