The book she was trying to read was a dead bore and she was pleasantly distracted by the heavy scent of lilacs. Lilacs are dream-inducing on a nice evening, and since the book concerned the duties of a budget committee in those towns which operate under the terms of New Hampshire's Municipal budget Act, it was so much nicer to contemplate the lilacs and the town in which they were growing, and some of the people who lived in it, in particular a young lawyer named Duncan McGuire.

She wondered, rather idly, if the town of Gavin's Falls was really odd, or just typical of New England, as she had been led to believe. It was certainly different from other towns in her admittedly limited experience, but just the same, it was a little strange. And contemplating the town was a lot safer, from her heart's point of view, than thinking about one of its more important inhabitants.

She looked at her little book without really seeing it, paid much more attention to the flowers just outside her window in the land lady's old-fashioned garden, and reconsidered her own position in the little town, especially with respect to Attorney McGuire, the chairman of that blasted budget committee she could not read about.

Beth-Anne was observant, and usually learned quite quickly. She had normal sensitivities, she thought, but she was confused. There was just so much she didn't understand. New Hampshire small towns, she had quickly learned, have some rather archaic institutions, institutions they are jealous of, cherish, and rarely try to explain to the newcomer. Newcomers must discover the workings of the town on their own.

Beth-Anne had a brand new degree in journalism, but she did not have a New England background. She was finding the learning process formidable, and completely unanticipated. A reporter, she had found, unless of the same stock, is regarded with suspicion, treated with a civil reserve, and left in the dark.

She was familiar with town meetings, of course. As a student at a New Hampshire college she had attended a couple, found them interesting, if incomprehensible. She had been left with the wish that she understood the comments that had caused so much laughter, the jokes made by the moderator during the course of a long evening. She had felt left out, of not being part of something special.

She had come to school in New England because of a love of skiing. She had visited once and fallen in love with the area, and chosen a school near the mountains, in the midst of the quiet scenery. Now she had a job on a small weekly newspaper in one of those quaint villages and was learning just how quaint it was. Her job was to cover the meetings of committees and agencies in Gavin's Falls, a town of less than two thousand people. It should have been simple, but it wasn't. She should have learned quickly who the key people were, what they did, and how they operated, but she couldn't. She didn't think anyone talked to anyone else, least of all to her.

She had dutifully attended each session of each board and learned the names of all the officials, and they all greeted her politely when she arrived, but thereafter they seemed to talk through her. What they said did not seem to pertain to the subject at hand. She knew the structure of town government; she had studied that in school and refreshed her memory before attending her first meetings. But all the action seemed to be taking place somewhere else.

Like now, for instance. Gavin's Falls was preparing to hold a postponed meeting of the school district. The postponement had been caused by Planning Board approval last year of a major housing development, the town's first multi-unit apartment complex. The School Board had found that the projected increase in enrollment would not fit into the village school. They had not completed their projections in time for the annual meeting in March, but now said that they had their plans and figures for an addition ready for consideration.

Beth-Anne had decided, based on the information she had unearthed, that the town was about equally divided on the subject. There were those who agreed with the School Board that a major addition was needed, and those who didn't. Those who said one more room was enough were opposed by those who agreed with the school board that now was the time to add a gym, a cafeteria, and a library to the grade school. It was time, they said, to enter at least the twentieth century.

She could not understand the controversy. It was easy to see, from the figures at least, that the school was too small. Of course kids needed a gym and a library. All kids did. Just because somebody's grandfather hadn't had them was no reason to deny today's kids. Beth-Anne's problem in understanding it lay with the Budget Committee. Not with the workings of it; she understood that fairly well. It was the chairman. His name was Duncan McGuire. If she closed her eyes she could see his rather intense face with its dark-rimmed glasses, looking every inch the brand new lawyer that he was. He directed the committee with an intensity that was painful, keeping the committee strictly to the issue at hand, allowing little or none of the casual side conversation of other boards, that she might have found illuminating.

And he ignored reporters. That hurt more than a little. He could at least acknowledge that she was there.

Duncan McGuire was the son of an old Gavin's Falls family, a descendant of one of the original founders. The McGuires were prominent and domineering, but were found only on the society pages of the paper, and then rarely. For Duncan to serve on the Budget Committee was a departure from the family style, although several McGuires had served as town leaders some generations ago. Beth-Anne had looked them up in the genealogies, purely out of curiosity, of course.

She found Duncan McGuire a bit bemusing. He was, apparently, the leader in the effort to confine the school addition to one new classroom and an accessory room, the plan labeled "B" by the school board. He was, she knew, a graduate of the village school, of a very good prep school, Dartmouth College and Harvard Law, and one of the towns more eligible bachelors. He should, therefore, considering his background, realize the importance of such things as libraries and computer labs, and she could not figure out why he didn't. She also found him fascinating, and his continual ignoring of her presence was disconcerting.

She did not think of herself as particularly unattractive. Other young men did not seem find her so. Her face was oval, her complexion creamy and she wore little make up. Her naturally blonde hair was long, slightly curly, and usually held back with a fancy clip, one of the few pieces of jewelry she habitually wore. She was quite short, she knew, barely five feet three inches, and not at all tiny. She realized that she had read a whole page of her booklet without remembering a word. The Budget Committee was not nearly as interesting a topic of contemplation as its chairman. She kept relating what she read to things he had said. She kept seeing his face as she had seen him last night at a school board meeting. He had sat in the sparse audience, arms folded, leaning back in his chair, and listening intently. He had not spoken during the entire evening except to acknowledge knowing some of those present. He might as well have been alone with the school board.

She had sat to his right and a little behind him, a perfect place from which to study his profile, a most interesting profile. She did not think he looked angry, or scornful, or judgmental, as she had heard others call him. He looked, well, thoughtful, and, yes, handsome. At the close of the meeting he had risen to leave and as he turned to pick up his jacket he had looked at her, a long, searching, unsmiling look. Then he had nodded in her general direction and gone.

Her heart was feeding on that one long look.

It was absurd, of course. She was not of his social class and he did not come anywhere near her long-held ideal of male perfection. He was too tall and thin for Beth-Anne's petite plumpness. He did not look at all athletic, although she knew that he played tennis; she had seen his name once on a list of participants at a celebrity charity affair. He might even be thinning a little at the temples. It was hard to tell with his dark-rimmed glasses.

She knew she was reading all the wrong things into that one appraising look, she told herself quite firmly. She had to go to a meeting tonight, the last one, the big one, before the actual vote on the school addition. She had to be objective about it, even if Duncan McGuire was on the wrong side.

She asked herself why she even cared about the vote. She had no real interest in this stand-offish town. She had come here only to learn the job of being a reporter, to get a year of two of experience before she moved on and up to a real newspaper, a city daily, not this tiny little everyone-does-everything kind of weekly where a school vote could be the important news of the day, even the month. She wanted, she told herself, more excitement, more interesting people, a wider range of stories.

This contest should be like watching a baseball game in which your team isn't playing, and she should be completely impersonal. She had chosen a side for this one event only, and she had chosen the side of progress, of growth, but it was purely academic, but, a nagging little thought suggested, her writing was tending to reflect that stand, in spite of her resolve.

Unfortunately, Duncan McGuire was on the other team. He was wrong, but she found herself tending to play down what he said, to make him look a little better, in her eyes anyway, in what she wrote of the meetings. She did not like the feeling that gave her of herself, of her own integrity. She really wanted to portray both sides evenly, be the disinterested by-stander, purely a reporter of things that did not concern her. This town was not hers, Duncan McGuire was not hers, could not be hers, and she was simply here to learn to be a reporter.

But, just the same, Gavin's Falls was a pretty town. It's very age, over 200 years, gave it a charm that she had never seen in the more western places she had lived. The hills enfolded it lovingly, the streets' wide-armed trees shaded lawns and flower gardens that came only with many years of patient care, and there were lilacs everywhere. It would be a nice place to stay.

She could not concentrate on her little book. Duncan's face kept forming on the page of print, and she threw the book away. It was time to face reality, she told herself again, go to the final hearing, listen to the issues, completely ignore the chairman except to report what he said. It was what she was trained for, the job she wanted to do. Personal feelings had no place in it, anywhere. She knew it would not be easy, and it wasn't. As the hearing progressed, the only word she would find for Duncan McGuire was obstructionist, and he based all of his arguments on finances.

"The town can't afford it," he said. "There isn't tax base enough here to build that kind of school."

"We can't afford not to," the school board chairman told him. "It's kids' futures we are talking about, the chance to give them the same kind of background as the other kids at the high school they'll go to. We are short-changing them."

"We aren't," Duncan said. "Spending more money doesn't mean a better education."

The chairman, an older man named Joe Brown, was a persuasive speaker with more than a touch of humor, a comparative new-comer to the town. Beth-anne found herself agreeing with him, carried away by his arguments. She left the meeting with a distinct feeling that the people present would go along with Joe, though few had said so. She also had the impression that the issue would be decided elsewhere, sometime before the vote was actually taken.

In the morning she read her notes, but with a weekly paper she did not have an immediate deadline. She went out for a walk to help her think, to organize her story in her mind. It was a beautiful spring morning and the air was full of the scent of lilacs. They were old bushes, almost trees, tucked into odd corners of streets and buildings. She thought Main Street a strange place for lilacs, but it was one of the endearing charms of the village that she would miss.

She met Duncan McGuire at the corner by The Coffee Shop, and he stopped her abruptly, unsmiling. "Miss Cummings?"

She looked up at him, saw that his eyes were almost green, and found she could hardly answer him. "Yes?"

"I would like to talk to you," he said. There was a cold hardness in his voice that cut her a little. "About last night."

Her journalistic sense was instantly aroused and it steadied her thinking a little. She said, almost normally, "Yes?"

"I would like to talk about the way you're going to write it in The Recorder."

"Why?" she asked, suddenly a little suspicious.

He smiled thinly, the only way she had ever seen him smile. "Over coffee, maybe, or lunch?"

It was tempting, so very tempting, what she had so longed for, but she drew herself up as tall as she could. "I write only what I see and hear," she said, keeping her voice from trembling. "I can only tell it like it is."

"Come on now," he said, his voice rising a little in irritation. "I'm only interested in getting the facts straight."

"I was there. I know what was said."

"I was only suggesting . . ."

"You were suggesting you could bribe me with lunch." She noted that her voice was also louder. "You wanted to influence what I write. I can't do that."

She saw a shadow cross his face. "You are all wrong, Miss Cummings."

"About what I write, or what you were trying to do?"

"Both," he said. "You don't understand this town. You don't know what is going on."

"I can hear," she told him. "I know what you've been saying for weeks now. You can't change it."

His face grew harder. He nodded abruptly, said thinly, "Good day, Miss Cummings," and strode off.

She did not dissolve into tears there on the street. There were people around who had seen them together, probably heard what they had said. She refused to be intimidated or to make a spectacle of herself. She held her head high and went quickly to the office and her computer to write her story the way she had half planned to write it before she went for her ill-fated walk.

Then she gave in to frustrated tears.

She kept herself busy until press day. There were a lot of jobs to do, stories to research, papers to organize, drawers to clean out. She cried several times and told herself not to be silly, that it had all been a daydream to begin with. It didn't help.

On Friday morning, the day after The Recorder was published, she found herself too depressed to think straight. She went to The Coffee Shop for breakfast, a thing she rarely did because it seemed an unfriendly place. Today she didn't care. Today she would begin that search for a better job, leave this cold uncaring place. That thought, too, depressed her and she realized she did not really want to leave. She actually liked it here.

The Coffee Shop seemed a little different this morning. Several patrons smiled and nodded as she passed. A man she barely knew spoke to her, calling her by name. But she was too numb to analyze it. Her world has collapsed into a pool of salty tears. She ordered coffee and an apple Danish and tried to firm up her resolve to leave.

She felt someone beside her and looked up self-consciously. Her heart skipped at least two beats and she could not speak.

Duncan McGuire asked, "May I join you?" He held a mug of coffee in his hand.

"I guess." She thought he looked a little embarrassed, and she could think of no good reason for him to be there.

He sat down awkwardly, sort of folding his long legs into the booth. "I apologize," he said, not too quietly. "I was wrong."

She thought she heard a laugh from the next booth. She looked down at her coffee cup, not sure how to answer.

"You were right," he said, still a little loudly. "I did try to bribe you, sort of."

She said, "Oh. Well it's all over."

He stirred the coffee he had set in front of him without looking at her. "It is indeed, all over but the voting."

She asked, for want of something better to say, something more intelligent, "How will it go?"

"Who knows? It doesn't matter. We all said our pieces."

She glanced up at him and saw that he was not looking at her. She asked, "Why are you here?"

"I said to apologize."

She didn't answer, but somehow felt it was not the whole truth.

He asked, still not looking up, "Did I really come across that bad at the hearing?"

"You stated your piece, Mr. McGuire. That is how I heard it."

He looked up at her, met her eyes. "That's what I admire about you, your honestly, your integrity, I guess. A lot of us do."

She gaped at him, speechless.

"It's refreshing," he said. "It's nice to have someone else around who can stand up for his - her - convictions."

She recovered herself slightly. "Thank you. I try."

"It's all any of us can do, and it isn't easy." He paused and their eyes met directly for the first time. She noted a small sparkle in their greenness. "Will you have dinner this evening with me, Beth-Anne?"

She hesitated, wondering.

"There is nothing between then and now for you to report. This time it is an honest invitation."

"Yes," she said, trying to still her heartbeat. "Of course."

She thought, maybe I can ask him about the lilacs. If there is time. There was really so much she wanted to know about Gavin's Falls, but those could take time, a very long time.

Copyright 2004 by Jessie Salisbury