by Alina Jacobs
“Look, Meg,” I begged after she adjourned the meeting.
“Get away from me,” she warned, her hands clenched.
I reached for her, but she threw me off.
“Just hear me out.”
“You have nothing to say that I want to hear.”
“I’m sorry,” I pleaded.
“I said I don’t want to hear it.”
“It wasn’t personal,” I assured her. “It was just—”
“Business?” She shook her head. “Yeah, I know. That’s how you go through life, after all. Everything is about money to you, and people are pawns that you can manipulate.”
“I know it looks bad, but I didn’t even want to be mayor.”
“And yet here you are, running for mayor,” she said, gesturing grandly.
“When I win,” I told her, “you can still be deputy mayor.”
Her upper lip curled back.
“Or you know,” I backtracked, “some other job. Or you can have no job. I told you I care about you. I’ll always be there for you.”
“When you win,” she said slowly.
“If,” I corrected.
“No, no, no.” She wagged her finger. “You honestly think you’re going to win, don’t you?”
“No?” I felt like I was being entangled in a trap.
“Of course he’s going to win,” Greg interjected. “Just from the money alone, we have a huge campaign war chest. I already have a super PAC set up. You might as well not even bother to run, Deputy Mayor.”
“Shut up, Greg,” I hissed through my teeth.
But my brother steamrolled ahead. “Be realistic. After the cell phone ban, the straw ban—”
“Single-use plastics,” she corrected, hands on her hips.
“And the ill-conceived notion that you were going to ban alcohol.”
“And would that be a bad thing?” Meg tapped her foot.
“To be fair, we would have had our development voted through if the majority of the voters weren’t too drunk to raise their hands, causing the item to be tabled until next meeting,” I reminded my brother.
“When Hunter is mayor,” Greg told Meg, “your stranglehold on this community will be broken.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” she replied, jaw set stubbornly. “You, Hunter, and your corrupt family are going down.”
The triplets toddled up to me. One of them sat on my shoe.
Meg’s face melted the tiniest bit.
“You can’t say that we’re all corrupt,” I joked, trying to ease the tension as I picked up the little kid.
He yawned adorably, raised a chubby hand, and pointed at Meg’s chest.
“Booby.”
Oof.
Meg pursed her lips. “I’ll see you at the debate,” she said.
I turned the toddler’s little face to mine. “Watch your language.”
“And this is why we need a shake-up amongst the Harrogate Svenssons,” Greg said. “You barely have it together. Once you’re mayor, I’m going to have Crawford come and corral the children.”
“Excuse me, Crawford? You hate Crawford.”
“He’s trying to storm the compound. Again. This will keep him distracted,” Greg insisted. “It’s the perfect plan.”
“I’m skeptical. I had a perfect plan once, until you ruined that one too,” I snapped at him.
Greg jerked his chin in Meg’s direction. “Give up on her. After this, she’ll never forgive you. Forget her and focus on winning.”
Winning was going to be easy. But forgetting Meg? I would never be able to quit her.
9
Meghan
“Hunter is such a dick!” I yelled to Susie.
I was stress baking in my rented studio apartment after the town hall meeting. Earlier in the day, I had bought a bunch of cake-making supplies to bake a raspberry chocolate layer cake in celebration. Instead, I had not only not become mayor, I now had to fight for the position against Hunter and Ida. Therefore, we would not be celebrating with a carefully baked cake. Nope. I was making chocolate-chip cookie dough, and I was eating it raw.
Susie poured me more red wine as I angrily threw handfuls of chocolate chips into the mixing bowl.
“He literally pretended to care about me. All the while, he was manipulating me and planning on how best to stab me in the back.”
“I think he maybe wanted to stab you somewhere else,” my friend joked.
“I don’t think about him that way,” I said primly while furiously refusing to fantasize about how good it had felt the last time.
I mixed in the chocolate chips. My stomach churned in time with the beater. “What if I lose?” I said in a small voice. To lose to Hunter? I wouldn’t survive the humiliation. “I’d have to move. Maybe I need to look at moving now.”
“You’re leaving?” Susie cried. “But you’re my best friend.”
“I cannot live here if Hunter is the mayor,” I said, scraping the sides of the bowl. “I literally would not survive. I couldn’t watch him swagger around in his fancy suit and million-dollar watches—”
“His watch costs a million dollars?” Susie said in disbelief.
“Yup,” I said. “Because if you’re a man and you have a lot of money, you buy a watch and a nice car.”
“Jeez.” Susie leaned back on my bed, which was only a few feet away from the kitchen counter because this was my life. “If I had a million dollars, I wouldn’t spend it on a watch.”
“See,” I said, “that’s what you don’t understand. Hunter has billions. Plural. A million-dollar watch is nothing to him.”
Just like you. It stung.
“So are you finally over Hunter now?” Susie asked me carefully.
I took a fortifying bite of raw cookie dough. “Yes,” I said. “I am over him. I don’t want anything to do with him. It just sucks that I’m going to lose to him.”
“You don’t know that,” Susie assured me, scooping out some of the dough and turning on the oven. “I cannot afford to get sick.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the eggs. They’re farm fresh.”
“It’s the raw flour that does you in,” she told me, rolling out several cookies. “Also, you cannot just give up. Focus on the basics of campaigning. Everyone in town knows you. You’ve been the deputy mayor for years. Hell, with the way Barry never worked, you’ve basically been doing the job of mayor too.”
“No one is going to care,” I said dejectedly. “They think I’m bossy and shrill just because I won’t let them text and drive or throw plastic straws into the street or drink in excess at meetings.” The raw cookie dough swam in my vision. I took another bite. “But they are going to remember how Hunter provided food and alcohol at town halls. Just watch… he’ll spend all this money to basically bribe people. He and his family are probably out there spreading lies right now.”
“You never know,” Susie joked, “Ida could be the next mayor.”
“Lord help us,” I said, waving the spoon at the ceiling.
“I know.” Susie shook her head. “I’ve already reached my limit on being a police officer in a small town. With Ida in charge, I think I would need to quit and become a full-time recluse.”
“If I win, you can be my deputy mayor,” I joked.
Susie looked intrigued. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I told her. “There’s no one else I would want to work with.”
My friend grinned broadly at me.
“But first, I have to win, so don’t quit your job,” I warned.
“You’ll win,” Susie said emphatically. “You just have to walk the streets, go door to door, host kaffeeklatsches, moderate roundtables, and visit every little club and organization in town to remind everyone that you care about the town.”
The problem? I was going to be hard-pressed to find the time.
I woke up the next morning with dried cookie dough in my hair. I had an early-morning meeting with the city employees during which Uncle Barry
’s secretary took her dear, sweet time giving me the rundown of the former mayor’s activities.
“He always has a coffee with the state senator at Marco’s,” she said. “He orders a sausage roll and an espresso. Lately though, he’s been stopping by Sadie’s for a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit after.”
No wonder he collapsed at the party.
“Then I read him his emails when he gets into the office. I have them all printed out if you want me to go through them,” she said, perching her glasses on her nose from the chain around her neck. “Here’s one about a roundtable discussion at the governor’s office for rural development in New York. And here’s one about—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Stodder,” I said firmly. “Just have all his emails forwarded to my account, and I will sort through them.”
“Forward?” she asked, blinking in confusion.
“Never mind,” I told her. “I’ll talk to IT and get the password.”
Why am I even bothering? I thought as I walked to Hazel’s café for my first official campaign meeting.
Hunter’s going to win. I should just let it all pile up into a giant steaming heap of small-town bullshit and let him suffocate in it when he becomes mayor.
But I couldn’t do that; I had sworn an oath. I couldn’t just shirk my job responsibilities. But I also didn’t have time to run a whole campaign, especially since the majority of my team consisted of my younger sisters, who were less than happy to participate.
“I made snacks!” Hazel said brightly.
“Are we being paid?” Minnie asked with a sigh, not looking up from her phone.
“If I win, we’ll be able to afford somewhere to live. How about that?” I replied tartly.
“We can’t just stay with Hazel?” Rose complained.
“Hazel can’t get any from Archer if we’re here,” Minnie said snottily.
“God save me from teenage girls,” Hazel muttered.
“We’re family. We stick together,” I reminded them.
“Yeah, some family. Barry ran off with all our money. And you just let him,” Rose said to me accusingly.
“I didn’t let him do anything, you little brat,” I snapped at her.
Rose rolled her eyes at me.
“If you’re going to beat the Svenssons, you have to be a boss, not just a boss babe. You have to grind Hunter’s balls into the ground. You can’t let him walk all over you.”
“That’s right,” Minnie added. “You need a campaign office and money and volunteers.”
I grabbed one of the pinwheel sandwiches Hazel had made and took a bite. I was feeling anxious.
“Maybe you can take out a loan,” Hazel suggested.
“Can’t,” Minnie said, looking up from her phone. “Isaac Svensson told me that he heard Hunter and Garrett talking. Barry used all our social security numbers to apply for credit cards and maxed them out.”
My mouth fell open. “What the—how does Isaac know about our financial situation, and I don’t? How do you know?”
Minnie made a face. “Because, unlike you, I want you to win. I gave Isaac a kiss, and he basically combusted, and I milked him for information.” She smiled. “Boys are so dumb.”
“I can’t tell if I’m proud or angry,” I said after a moment of confounded silence.
“Be angry!” Rose insisted. “Go demand that Hunter give you all of our financial information.”
“You’re right! I am!” I said, standing up then taking another sandwich for fortification. “I’m going over to his house right now.”
“He’s at his campaign headquarters,” Minnie corrected.
“Hunter has a campaign headquarters?”
“See?” Minnie said after we had made our way down Main Street.
Hunter had set up a state-of-the-art campaign office in one of the historic buildings near the town square. It was bursting with his brothers as they unpacked brand-new high-end furniture, laptops, and the swag and signs that had already been produced.
His teenage brothers stood outside, clearly bored, as they halfheartedly passed out key chains and bumper stickers to passersby. They perked up when they noticed Minnie and Rose. Isaac could barely speak when my sisters and I crossed the street.
“Hi, Minnie,” he finally stammered out. “Do you want a pen? It has a ruler in it.”
She took it from him. “Oh, five inches? So it’s just right for you!” she said brightly.
“Minnie,” I chastised while Isaac took a minute for his brain to catch up.
His brothers doubled over laughing.
The door swung open, and Hunter loomed in the doorway. “You are supposed to be working.”
“Seems like you don’t have things as under control as you want people to believe,” I said.
Hunter took a deep breath. “My brothers are allowed to pass out campaign paraphernalia. I checked the local ordinances.”
“Are they also allowed to make out with my sisters?” I demanded. “Where were you? How could you let that happen?”
Hunter’s eyes went cold, and he grabbed Isaac.
“Inside!” he barked. “You’re grounded.”
“Meg,” Minnie exclaimed, “I was trying to—”
“Shh!” Rose hissed.
“And you,” I said to Hunter. He backed up into the office as I advanced on him.
“You thought I wasn’t going to find out about all the things you were hiding from me?”
His eyes shifted. “What things?”
“You’re still lying to me. I’m shocked.” I crossed my arms. “I want all the information you have on Barry’s finances, and I want it now.”
“I’ll assemble it for you,” he said smoothly.
“Now,” I ordered.
“I don’t have it here.” He made a frustrated gesture. “Obviously. You see what kind of operation this is.”
I glared at him.
“All of those chairs need to be dust free,” Hunter barked at Isaac. “I apologize about his behavior. He’s not going near your sisters again.”
“I better have all the information on my desk by tomorrow morning,” I warned him. “I’m done with letting you jerk me around.”
10
Hunter
“Are you out of your mind?” I barked at Isaac after Meg and her sisters had left.
“Minnie kissed me!” Isaac insisted as he haphazardly wiped down the furniture. “I was just minding my own business, and then she popped out of nowhere.”
“And then he basically word vomited all our family business,” Bruno said.
“You’re just jealous because Minnie likes me more.”
“No,” Bruno retorted, “it’s just because she knew you were dumber.”
“What information did you give them?” I demanded.
“Not a lot, just, you know, the financial stuff,” Isaac admitted.
So that’s why she was down here.
“You’re scaring them for no reason,” I chided Isaac.
“They’re penniless, and their uncle ran off with their money,” my brother exclaimed.
“I’m going to fix it,” I promised. “Well, I was planning on fixing it, but now you went and stirred up the hornets’ nest.”
“So that’s that? You’re just going to let their behavior slide?” Greg asked from his spot across the room where he was not helping.
“I’m handling it,” I said to the ceiling, trying to ease the tension in my shoulders.
“Are you handling it like Meg’s finances?” he asked snidely.
“They’re in debt,” Garrett said. “Major debt. We filed police reports and started the process to have the majority of it expunged. But the house…” He slid a finger across his throat.
“Don’t give them a penny until after the election,” Greg said. “We need that one last card in our back pocket to pull just in case things go south.”
I didn’t see how I would lose. I mean, Meg didn’t even have a campaign office.
Unfortunately, Greg
had not been convinced and had insisted that I be at the health-and-safety committee meeting that afternoon. There were several prominent community members on the board. Greg had thought it would be good for them to see that I was serious about being involved in run-of-the-mill Harrogate matters, even though I would rather supervise the toddlers in a mud bath than sit in the stuffy conference room and listen to several of Harrogate’s most notorious seniors discuss their ailments.
“You have to eat more fiber,” Edith Roberts was telling Bettina. “Come down to Girl Meets Fig! I’ve just invented a new smoothie. My granddaughter is going to ask one of the big restaurant blogs to post about it.”
“I’m not drinking any of that tree bark sludge you gave Art,” Bettina said flatly. “He ruined my couch after I pressed his G-spot last night.”
I need a real campaign manager. Someone who isn’t Greg or Garrett, who just enjoys sowing chaos and yanking my chain. And making me go to these meetings.
“Fiber keeps your colon healthy.”
“Art can’t take it,” Bettina countered. She jerked her chin at me. “He could, though.”
Ida looked me up and down. “Yep. That’s a man with an iron sphincter.”
“Are these meetings always like this?” I muttered to Meg.
“Why?” she whispered back. “Can’t handle it? Not too late to drop out of the race.”
“We need more men on the committee.” Dottie patted my arm. “You can’t leave.”
“Yep, we’re trying to make Harrogate healthy, and part of that is making sure our men are performance ready,” Ida declared.
“That’s the one thing that can be said for Hunter,” Meg said dryly. “Despite all of his faults, he’s always primed and ready.”
“I—”
“We need to have city-sponsored workshops targeting men’s sexual health,” Ida declared.
Bettina nodded eagerly. “Did you know that a lot of men are not wearing the correct-sized condoms?”
I reeled. We aren’t seriously having this conversation…
“Before I got sued by that lady who got one of my dildos sucked up in her hoo-ha and had to declare bankruptcy on Bath and Body Twerks,” Ida said, wiping away a tear, “my sex toy company sold condoms, and you would not believe how many guys were buying condoms that were clearly too big for them.”