“Fine. I should be getting back now.” She walked back to kneel on the blanket and tidy the remains of their impromptu picnic.

“That’s a skill I admire, and nobody does it like a woman. The implied ‘fuck you,’ ” he explained, then shot the ball in the air for Moe once more. “She left me. Or I didn’t go with her. Depends on your point of view. We were together the best part of a year. She was a reporter for the local station, moved up to weekend anchor, then evening anchor. She was good, and we got to have all these arguments and discussions over the impact and value of our particular news medium. Which is sexier than it may sound. Anyway, we planned to get married, move to New York. Eventually, on the moving part. Then she got an offer from an affiliate up there. She went. I stayed.”

“Why did you stay?”

“Because I’m George fucking Bailey.” The ball burst out of his hand again like a rocket.

“I don’t understand.”

“George Bailey, giving up his dreams of travel and adventure to stay in his hometown and rescue the old savings and loan. I’m no Jimmy Stewart, but the Dispatch sure as hell turned out to be my savings and loan. My stepfather, Dana’s dad, had been ill. My mother shifted some of the responsibilities of editor in chief to me. I assumed it was temporary, until Joe got back on his feet. But the doctors, and my mother, wanted him out of the cold winters. And they wanted, deserved, to enjoy a retirement period. She threatened that if I didn’t take over for her at the paper, she would shut it down. My mother doesn’t make idle threats.”

With a humorless laugh, he tossed the ball again. “You can bet your ass she doesn’t. A Flynn runs the Valley Dispatch or there is no Dispatch.”

Michael Flynn Hennessy, she thought. So Flynn was a family name and a legacy. “If she knew you wanted something different . . .”

He managed to smile. “She didn’t want something different. I could’ve gone, just kicked the dust off my heels and gone with Lily to New York. And all the people who work at the paper would’ve been out of a job. Half of them, maybe more, wouldn’t have been picked up by whoever started another paper. She knew I wouldn’t go.”

He studied the ball in his hand, turned it slowly, spoke softly. “She never did like Lily anyway.”

“Flynn—”

He gave in to Moe’s desperate excitement and heaved the ball. “Before I make it sound pitiful and pathetic—I did want to go, then. I loved Lily, then. But I didn’t love her enough to pack up and go when she gave me the ultimatum. She didn’t love me enough to stay, or to give me the time to work things out here and meet up with her.”

Then you didn’t love each other at all, Malory thought, but she remained silent.