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cottage kid who now owned the gas station stood on Dewi's porch, glaring through the windshield at Sam.
    “Hello, Lee.” Sam rolled down his window. “ You inviting me in to join the boys for coffee?” Sam knew better. Of all the people who held his past against him, Lee was the worst.
    Lee grunted his contempt at Sam's suggestion. “Just saying them parking spaces are for paying customers.”
    Sam chose not to point out how those paying customers often sat in Dewi's all day spending nothing but the price of a bottomless cup of coffee. “Not to worry, Lee. I'll gladly give up my spot if somebody comes along who needs it.”
    “Too bad it ain't that easy to run you out of the pulpit.”
    “I’m not running anywhere, Lee.” Sam shrugged, his shoulders rasping against the worn fabric of his truck’s seat. “I wasn't called to take the easy path. I wasn't called only to walk through friendly doors. I came here to help make things better for everyone, even those who don't want me, and I will be staying for a while.”
    Lee snorted and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “We'll see about that.” As he walked inside, his heavy boots scuffed over the old boards like a schoolyard bully kicking up dirt on the playground.
    Sam sat back and fixed his gaze on the steeple of the Persuasion All Souls Community Church. Big Hyde had tried to warn him. But that hadn't prepared Sam for the reality of the forsaken church or the coldness of the townspeople. What had he expected? The seed of the idea to come back to town and set things right got planted in his brain so long ago that he hardly remembered anymore where his realistic plans left off and his idealism took over.
    The screen door of Dewi's opened and slammed shut again, but Sam had not noticed who had gone inside. Whoever he was, he had certainly not taken the time to offer a wave or invite Sam to come inside and warm up. No, warmth was one thing no one here extended to him. What had he been thinking coming back?
    Maybe the real question was , who had he been thinking about? He told himself he'd come back to serve his hometown, to try to build a future for children growing up here now, and to make amends with people he'd hurt when he was nothing but a troubled kid himself.
    He ought to know by this stage in his life that the lie you tell yourself is the most dangerous lie of all.
    He’d come back for her. For Nicolette.
    He could see her in his mind's eye just as clear this moment as she had been on the night he left her standing on Reggie LaRue's lawn on New Year's Eve. Nic had told her mother she was with a girlfriend, then sneaked over to Reggie's, the scene of wild goings-on the likes of which a girl like Nic would never have even imagined if she hadn't gotten hooked up with Sam. He had promised to marry her and take her away from Persuasion forever. That night, Nic learned once and for all how easily a man who made a promise in passion to a woman could break that promise, even if he knew it would also break her heart.
    It was the lie he told himself that allowed him to do it. The means he found to justify his selfish behavior, to take the easy path instead of doing the right thing. Looking back now, he understood it had been a pivotal point in his life, the thing that had set him on a sometimes dark and ever twisting path. It was that night that had brought him back from the brink many times and brought him back to Persuasion in time.
    There was nothing noble or forward thinking in his actions that night. He just got scared, and being a young man, became arrogant in his fear. So he ran off, telling himself he was doing it for her own good, and left the only girl he had ever loved standing in Reggie’s yard sobbing. He had not done it for her.
    But he had moved back for her. At least partly. He moved back for all the fine reasons he'd recited again and again to the people he left behind. But in his heart, he always made himself add, and for Nic. I'm moving back for Nic