It would be nice to be a kid again and only have to worry about homework and hanging out with friends, Emily thought as Kayla shut off the computer and headed for the phone in her room. You get to be an adult and things get a lot more complicated.

About all that Emily and Dave had decided during the trip back from Kalamazoo was that they weren’t going to make a final decision just yet – or at least that Emily wasn’t since he told her he’d back her up either way. At a minimum, she had to have a talk about it with Kevin, and maybe Jason and Vicky since whatever she did might well have an impact on the knife shop too.

There was no point in being in a big rush since Lloyd could still change his mind. If it turned into just a case of managing the Courier for him, or helping him out, well and good, no problem. She knew there was a lot that she didn’t know, and this week had only pointed it out to her.

There were some advantages. Even though she knew Lloyd worked some weird hours, it was nothing like the hours she’d had to work at the Spee-D-Mart to keep the place open 24/7. She probably would be working less hours, and it would be the end of having to get up at two in the morning to go down to the store and try to stay awake watching late-night TV until the sun came up.

One of the real big issues was that she was still the mayor and on the city council. Even though she’d already been working for Lloyd part time for several years, he still covered the council meetings to avoid any conflict of interest. Clearly, someone else would have to cover council most of the time. Maybe she could do a meeting report once in a while in an emergency, but she wouldn’t be able to on a regular basis. For the moment, she probably could get Dave to do them, but if he went back to New York she’d have to find someone else – not that she couldn’t but however it worked, it would seem awkward.

If she had to bet, she would put her money on Dave heading back to New York as soon as the school year was over, in a little over three months. He’d told her on the drive back that among the reasons he didn’t want to do it was that Julie’s aura still hung over the place for him. It seemed to him like he was cheating on her by being with Shae there. He knew that what Shae was doing was important to her. As he could do what he was doing about anywhere, it seemed logical that he could do it in New York.

Although he seemed awkward about Shae being pregnant so soon after Julie’s death, he really seemed happy about the situation. Emily had known right from the first that he was a real good father to the boys and wanted them to have the advantage of someone filling their mother’s shoes. Once everything got ironed out, it seemed likely to Emily that all the elements were there for a strong, happy family that wouldn’t have much to worry about, especially money.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Kevin was home. “Hi, hon,” he said. “I take it you got the paper out all right.”

“It went pretty well,” Emily said, wondering how she was going to bring up the subject of her discussion with Lloyd and Dave.

“So where are the kids?”

“JJ is up at Brandon’s. Kayla is in her room, yapping on the phone with Rachel.”

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about it. Her birthday isn’t that far off, and if we want to be able to use the phone ourselves for the next few years, maybe we ought to get another phone line run in here.”

“It might not be that bad an idea,” Emily smiled. “It’d really be a gift to ourselves, but it also may be that we’ll want the phone a little less tied up anyway.” She took a deep breath and continued. “Something interesting came up today. Dave and I went up to see Lloyd. He says he wants me to manage the paper for him, and maybe buy him out.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” he nodded. “You have any idea how much money you’re talking about?”

“We haven’t reduced it to dollars and cents, we’re still working on the idea,” she replied. “But Dave offered to back me on it financially. It turns out he can afford it. It complicates things, but I think it’s worth some thought.”

“If it looks like it’d work out financially, I’d say go for it. I’ve learned over the years that when you set your mind to it you can do just about anything you want.”

“It’s sweet of you to say that,” she smiled. “I’ve been having some doubts, but I’m leaning in that direction myself.”

“Mom,” Kayla asked as her mother drove the minivan out to Rachel’s late on Saturday morning. “If you wind up running the paper, do you think maybe I could work there when I get older?”

“Probably,” her mother replied. “I’m not sure doing what, but there will probably be something.”

“Well, good,” Kayla grinned. “I was bummed when I realized that I couldn’t work at the Spee-D-Mart when I’m old enough.”

“To tell you the truth, I was real bummed to learn I wouldn’t be working there either,” her mother smiled. “But whatever happens, it looks like I’ll be working at the paper at least for a while. I’m starting to think that maybe it was for the best, and that maybe it’s time to move on from the Spee-D-Mart.”

“When are you going to know?”

“I don’t know,” her mother smiled. “Probably not for a while yet. It won’t be before Lloyd gets out of the hospital, but with any kind of luck that’ll be next week sometime. Even if we do work out an agreement to go ahead, it may take a while to get everything set up.”

It was only a few miles out to the Bacon house. When they got there, Kayla got out of the van and went to knock on the door, while her mother waited to make sure that someone was home. Someone was; Mrs. Bacon came to the door and let her in. “Hi, Kayla,” she smiled. “It sure is strange to see you wearing shoes.”

“I’ll take them off so I don’t track up the house,” Kayla said. “It’s not bad to go outside for a little while barefoot, but if we run back to my place in all this snow my feet could get too cold.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” Mrs. Bacon smiled. “I can’t even get out of bed and go to the bathroom this time of year without having slippers on. Rachel’s up in her room, just go on up.”

Carrying her shoes, Kayla headed up the stairs of the big, rambling old farmhouse. She had been there several times over the last few months, and had learned early on that the farm had been in the family for generations, although Mr. Bacon didn’t actually farm it any more – he leased it out to someone else.

One of the neat things Kayla had learned about the family was that everyone in it was a runner. Rachel was the youngest of three kids. Her oldest sister, Chelsea, had run cross-country all through school. She was a junior at Amherst, and was a lot of fun, if a little stuck up. Rachel’s brother, Casey, was a year older and ran too – in fact, had won the boy’s middle school championship in cross-country last fall, the race before Kayla had won the girl’s championship. He was OK, and though he often seemed like a typical boy to Kayla, sometimes she thought he was sort of cute.

Rachel’s mom and dad were runners too. Several times a year they went to running events, 5k’s and 10k’s, that sort of thing, but her dad liked trail and off-road races – something considerably different than the prepared trail of cross-country – and both of them had run half marathons and even full ones! Kayla had told her mother that she thought maybe she’d like to run a marathon some time and her mother had looked at her like she thought she ought to have her head examined. Rachel’s mom said that Kayla could come along with them to some events next summer, so she might even get to do one, or maybe more if she wanted to.

Kayla hung out with Rachel in her room for a while, just talking girl talk. Not for the first time, Kayla eyed the computer on the desk in Rachel’s room and wished she had one in hers so she could get on Allison’s Sanctuary and some other neat places without someone looking over her shoulder. Having to get off the computer on short notice on Wednesday had been a real bummer. She hadn’t had a chance to get back on, to read a couple topics that seemed real interesting, and to see if maybe Airclad had replied to her personal message. They’d had the start of a real good exchange of messages and it would have been neat to continue on for a while.

After a while, Rachel’s mom called them down to lunch, and they had soup and sandwiches. When they had finished, they went back to Rachel’s room to hang out for a while, until finally Rachel mentioned that if they were going to go for a run they probably ought to get out and do it, and by then Kayla was ready. The plan they’d worked out the day before was to run back to Kayla’s house and hang out there for a while before Rachel called her mother to come pick her up.

Outside, it really wasn’t a bad day; warmish, although there was a fair amount of snow on the ground, enough that Kayla pulled her running shoes back on although for a shorter run she might not have. Rachel’s mom told them to be careful and not overdo it.

“Tell you what,” Rachel said as they did their stretching before they got started, “let’s go back through the woods. We’ll have to take it slow, and the snow gets deep in spots, but there’s some neat stuff back there.”

“Great idea,” Kayla said. “I like messing around the woods in back of our house. I go out for walks there sometimes, even running.” She was not about to tell Rachel that she usually did it in the nude, not now anyway – but maybe when the weather warmed up there might be an opening for raising the idea.

The first little bit wasn’t too bad – someone had been out in the fields with a tractor and manure spreader to pack the snow down, and they could keep up a pretty good pace, although more jogging than actually running. Then Rachel led her on a path through the woods, and that was harder going – someone had clearly been out there but it wasn’t a beaten-out path either. They went over a hill, down through a valley, up another hill and down a little gully that led to a creek that was open and flowing pretty full as the result of the melting of the warm day. They followed the creek for a while, having to detour around some places where it had backed up onto the flood plain.

After a while Rachel came to a stop. “This is my favorite spot,” she told Kayla. “It’s not on our property but no one comes back here. When the water is at its normal level, there’s kind of a pond here, not real big, but just enough to swim in a little. I like to come back here and hang out by myself.”

Airclad’s message from the other day quickly came to Kayla’s mind. This was just exactly the sort of spot that Airclad had been talking about, a nice little secret swimming hole away from everyone where she could come and be nude and enjoy nature. Did Rachel ever come back here skinny-dipping? Might be! She thought about asking, but decided not to – if she didn’t swim nude here it might not be a good idea to set her off about it. Maybe she’d better wait for some time next summer when she could make the suggestion, or just strip down and see if Rachel would too. “Looks neat,” she replied. “We’ll have to come back here and try it sometime when the water’s warmer.”

“Yeah, it’s running too fast now, anyway,” Rachel agreed. “If it was calm, I’d almost be tempted to do a quick dip though.”

“That’d be awful cold,” Kayla grinned. “But it would be an awful lot of fun. Think of how much you’d have to run to warm up.”

They didn’t hang around the swimming hole very long, since they were warmed up and didn’t want to stiffen up, so Rachel led them out by another route, which eventually took them through a cut-over cornfield, and out to a gravel road. From there it was several miles back to Kayla’s, seven or eight maybe, and they took their time, just enjoying being out running together.

Eventually they got back to Kayla’s house. “That was a good run,” Rachel said. “It’ll be better when it’s warmer and we don’t get so cold and muddy. I could really stand a shower and some dry clothes.”

“I’m sure there’s something of mine you could wear,” Kayla said. “It’s too bad the pool is all covered up and iced up. It’s real neat to come off a run and just take your clothes off and jump in. Sometimes I don’t even wait for that.”

“Yeah, that’s one nice thing about having a pool of your own,” Rachel agreed. “We’ll have to do it sometime.”

Kayla told her mother they were going to take showers and put on dry clothes, then headed for her room. Kayla dug out some clothes for her friend and told her to feel free to shower first, and Rachel promised she’d be quick.

As Rachel headed to the shower, Kayla realized that this might be as good a time to break the ice with Rachel as there could be. After all, it was sort of like a locker room situation, and they were both girls. She took off her clothes – it was warmer without all that wet stuff on anyway – and waited until her friend came back from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. She seemed quite surprised to see Kayla naked as she headed for the shower. “Wow!” Rachel said. “Your mom actually lets you run around naked?”

“Between my room and the shower, if my brother’s not around anyway,” Kayla replied. “She’s never said anything about it, I just do it.” She headed out into the hall nude, saying, “Back in a couple minutes.”

Although she hadn’t really had much to go on, Kayla thought that Rachel reacted really, really well to seeing her nude – a little envious even. Now didn’t seem to be the right time, although it seemed promising that she might have a skinny-dipping friend come summer, which didn’t seem all that far away now.

And yes, her mother had reacted real well to seeing her nude last Monday. Her father too. She didn’t think she was quite ready yet to bring up the idea of being a little more free about going nude around the house, but the door seemed open. Maybe a few more “accidents” would make it seem all the more normal, which had something to do with her leaving the bathroom door half open as she got into the shower.

I really need to get it settled before summer, she thought as she turned on the water. The situation around the house right now was a bit of a hassle, what with the knife shop and now Mom getting involved with the paper, so I’ll have to choose just exactly the right time …

The last few days of March were heavy days for Emily when the Spee-D-Mart was winding down. Early on they quit re-supplying the shelves, and just let the stock sell out. As the month drew to a close that meant that the place was getting empty and barren. Emily ran an ad in the Courier the last couple weeks of the month announcing closeout sale prices, and that made what was left go even quicker. In the end, she and Sharon closed it up a couple days early.

They were talking it over on Friday afternoon of the weekend before their planned last day when a final customer reported that the gas pump wasn’t pumping anything. Emily had measured the tank the first thing that morning and knew it was getting low, but hadn’t realized it was quite that low. She looked around the mostly empty shelves, let out a sigh, and told Sharon, “No point in it any more.”

“Looks like it to me,” Sharon agreed. “Why don’t you just lock up and go home?”

“Might as well,” Emily sighed, knowing that an important part of her life was ending. She hadn’t been a whole lot older than Kayla when she first started working here a few hours a week, mostly cleaning and stocking shelves. When she graduated from high school, she came down here and worked behind the counter the next day. She’d taken a week off a few weeks later when she and Kevin got married, then rode his old Kawasaki crotch rocket up to Mackinac Island for a brief if wonderful honeymoon. After it ended she came back here, put on the apron, and pretty much had been here ever since. A lot had happened in that time, and her life had changed in ways she’d never thought possible. Now, it was going to be just a memory, and in a few weeks the building itself would be a memory too.

She took off the apron, tossed it on the counter, turned off the lights for the last time, and walked out the door behind Sharon, then turned to lock it. Almost twenty years, goodbye forever. “Thanks, Emily,” Sharon said sadly. “Thanks for everything.”

But Emily didn’t go home. She walked down the street and turned into the office of the Courier, which, if everything went all right, would be as much a part of her life for the next twenty years and more, as the Spee-D-Mart had been for the last twenty. Instead of Hazel, who was supposed to be watching the store, Lloyd was there, cleaning out his desk. “Amazing the amount of pure crap that builds up in a desk in almost fifty years,” he snorted. “I was never known to be one for keeping the neatest desk but even I’m astounded at the stuff I’m throwing out.” He waved a brown envelope in the air. “Here’s a job ticket for 500 letterheads, dated 1957.” He shook his head and continued, “Makes me wonder if old man Olsen ever got them. No way to ask now, he must be dead at least thirty years.”

“I know,” she said, rather subdued. “I’m going through a bout of that myself right now. The last week we’ve been finding stuff at the Spee-D-Mart that goes back to before I started working there. That’s almost twenty years. Where did the time go, Lloyd?”

“Things change, Emily,” he said philosophically. “Whether we like it or not, time passes. We just have to accept it and move on. Gather ye rosebuds, and all that. I probably should have done this ten years ago but I kept trying to tell myself that I was still a young man.”

“You are still young, Lloyd,” Emily replied soothingly. “Young at heart, anyway, and that’s what counts.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he shrugged. “Still, I should have done this a while back. It wasn’t fair to Betty, if nothing else. Besides, maybe it wasn’t fair to Bradford. I like some of the changes that you and Dave have been making. It’s giving the thing a whole new look, a whole new feeling. People tell me they think you’re doing well at it.”

“It’ll be good to be able to give my full attention to it,” Emily said. “But I promised Sharon I’d stick it out till the end. It’s just good that Dave has been able to carry some of the load the last month or so, but he’s been cutting into his work time to do it.”

“Yeah, I can see he’s put a lot into it.” Lloyd shook his head. “Sure was strange to see your name and his on the masthead this week, instead of mine.”

“Well, since he’s backing me, I thought it ought to be there,” Emily told him. “You’re still heading down to Florida the first of the week, right?”

“Yeah, Betty has found some more places that she wants to look at. I figure we’ll be there two or three weeks, then we’re going up north for a bit. I sure wouldn’t want to spend summer down in that steam bath, but I don’t think I’ll miss the Michigan winters much.”

“Well, Lloyd, you know you’re always welcome to drop by.”

“I might, and I might not,” he shrugged. “I figure if I got to get away from it I better get all the way away from it. But don’t feel afraid to call me if you run into something I might be able to help you with.”

“Sure, Lloyd,” she nodded. “I’ll try not to call you too much.”

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