The rest of the day passed as if he were watching it through someone else’s eyes. Hurt and angry, he barely remembered following Alvin along the highway back toward Raleigh. More than once, he glanced in his rearview mirror, staring back over the black asphalt, watching the cars that followed in the distance, hoping that one of them was Lexie. She’d been perfectly clear in her desire to end the relationship, but even so, he felt a surge of adrenaline whenever he saw a car that resembled hers, and he would slow down to get a better look. Alvin, meanwhile, would move farther into the distance. Jeremy knew he should be paying attention to the road beyond the windshield; instead, he spent most of his time looking back.

After dropping off his rental car, he paced the terminal and made his way to the gate. Walking past crowded shops, veering around people who were scurrying his way, he wondered again why Lexie seemed so willing to give up everything they’d shared.

On the plane, his thoughts were interrupted when Alvin took a seat next to him.

“Thanks for making it so we could sit together,” Alvin said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He stored his bag in the overhead bin.

“Huh?” Jeremy said.

“The seats. I thought you were going to take care of them when you checked in. It’s a good thing I asked when I got my boarding pass. I was supposed to sit in the last row.”

“Sorry,” Jeremy said. “I guess I forgot.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Alvin said, dropping into the seat next to him. He glanced at Jeremy. “You want to talk about it yet?”

Jeremy hesitated. “I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about.”

“That’s what you said earlier. But I’ve heard it’s supposed to be good for you. Haven’t you been keeping up with the talk shows lately? Express your feelings, purge your guilt, seek and ye shall find?”

“Maybe later,” he mumbled.

“Suit yourself,” Alvin said. “If you don’t want to talk, fine. I’ll just take a nap.” He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Jeremy stared out the window as Alvin slept for most of the flight.

In the cab he took from La Guardia, Jeremy was bombarded with noise and the hectic pace of the city: businessmen rushing past carrying briefcases, mothers towing small children while attempting to manage shopping bags, the smell of car exhaust, horns honking, and police sirens blaring. It was perfectly normal, a world he’d grown up in and had taken for granted; what surprised him was that as he looked out the car window, trying to orient himself to the reality of his life, he thought of Greenleaf and the utter silence he’d experienced there.

Back at his apartment building, his mailbox was stuffed with advertisements and bills; he grabbed it all and trudged up the stairs. Inside the apartment, everything was the same as he’d left it. Magazines lay strewn around the living room, his office was as cluttered as always, and there were still three bottles of Heineken in the refrigerator. After stowing his suitcase in his room, he opened a bottle of beer and carried his computer and satchel to his desk.

He had all the information he’d accumulated in the past few days: his notes and copies of the articles, the digital camera containing the photographs he’d shot of the cemetery, the map, and the diary. As he began unpacking, a packet of postcards fell onto the desk, and it took him a moment to remember that he’d picked them up on his first day in town. The top postcard was a view of the town from the river. Removing the wrapper, he began to thumb through the rest of them. He found postcards depicting the town hall, a misty view of a blue heron standing in the shallows of Boone Creek, and sailboats congregating on a blustery afternoon. Halfway through the packet, he found himself pausing at a picture of the library.

He sat motionless, thinking of Lexie and realizing again that he loved her.

But that was over now, he reminded himself, and he continued shuffling through the postcards. He saw a strangely grainy photograph of Herbs and another of the town as viewed from Riker’s Hill. The final postcard was a picture of the downtown area of Boone Creek, and here he found himself pausing once more.

The postcard, a reproduction of an old black-and-white photo, captured the town circa 1950. In the foreground was the theater with well-dressed patrons waiting near the ticket window; in the background stood a decorated Christmas tree in the small green area just off the main street. On the sidewalks, couples could be seen peeking in windows decorated with garlands and lights, or strolling hand in hand. As Jeremy studied the picture, he found himself imagining how the holidays were celebrated in Boone Creek fifty years earlier. In place of boarded storefronts, he saw sidewalks crowded with women wearing scarves and men wearing hats and children pointing upward at an icicle hanging from a signpost.

As he looked, Jeremy found himself thinking about Mayor Gherkin. The postcard depicted not only Boone Creek’s way of life half a century before but also the way that Gherkin hoped the town could be again. It was a Norman Rockwell existence, albeit with a southern flair. He held the postcard for a long time, thinking about Lexie and wondering again what he was going to do about the story.

The meeting with the television producers was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Nate met Jeremy at his favorite steak house, Smith and Wollensky’s, beforehand. Nate was his buoyant self, excited to see Jeremy and relieved to have him back in town under his watchful eye. As soon as he sat down, he began talking about the footage that Alvin had shot, describing the images as fantastic, like “that haunted house in Amityville, but real,” and assuring him that the television executives would love them. For the most part, Jeremy sat in silence listening to Nate jabber on, but when he saw a dark-haired woman leaving the restaurant, her hair exactly the same length as Lexie’s, he felt a lump in his throat and suddenly excused himself to go to the res............