Dearest Dorothy, If Not Now, When?

by Charlene Baumbich

  For instance, Harold was stunned to find three people spewing the same word-for-word phrase about Gladys’s choice “to stubbornly stand behind that square-defiling monstrosity Ms. Durbinville is creating in the old Taninger building.” He knew somebody was spreading what would be called a good sound bite for TV, and he guessed it was either Cora or Sam himself. They must have printed up that mouthful and passed it out along with instructions to memorize it.

  “Monstrosity?” Harold finally asked one old farmer who wiped his brow with his bandana after he spoke, as though the mere thought of the entire monstrosity made him sweat—even though it was only in the high sixties that day. “Why do you call the mini mall a monstrosity?”

  “Why do I call it a monstrosity, you ask?” He repeated the question back to Harold as if he, a newspaper reporter, were daft to even have to ask such a dumb thing.

  “Yes, that would be the question,” Harold said patiently, his steno pad and pencil poised in his hands ready to take down the response.

  The old farmer eyed the pad, then turned his eyes up to the sky, as though hoping to spot a skywriter spelling out the correct quotable answer. “Why, you ask. Well,” he said, shifting his eyes over to the right, “because sometimes old and empty is better than new and abused.” Harold’s pencil flew across his pad. He had a feeling that phrase would soon show up on yet another new campaign button, or possibly already had. In fact, he wished he’d opened a button business since he figured the Hethrow Button Business (yes, that was its official name) must be working 24/7 just to keep up with Partonville’s recent demand on both sides of the election coin.

  He and Sharon started a bulletin board in the office called SLOGANS AND SMEARS. They posted it on the inside of a cabinet door, to be discreet since they often added their own sarcastic tidbits. It consisted of phrases they saw on buttons and/or some hand-scrawled signs in the rear windows of cars and pickup trucks. Of course MAYOR+MCKERN=MOMENTUM appeared on buttons the day after Sam passed his buttons out. But they’d also seen the likes of SWAP YOUR VOTE FOR A TOILET?, VITNER FOR VINTAGE, NOT MAYOR and MAYOR+VITNER=VANISHING TOWN. All this in three days! Some people were wearing so many buttons, Sharon told Harold, that it looked like the new Partonville fashion trend was polka dots!

  At 8:30 A.M. Harold told Sharon he was going to take a stroll around the block to make sure they hadn’t missed reporting anything obvious. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone. I’ll be back in time to wrap up our election news, or at least shelve it for awhile, so we can switch hats for the mall meeting.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, not even looking up, her fingers clacking away on her keyboard.

  “And you know, it occurs to me we might run out of space to run that picture you took of the cracked sidewalk.” Hey, a guy could hope, couldn’t he?

  “Mr. Crab,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, “you know very well you taught me to deliver the news, and Paul’s fall caused by cracked and heaving cement is certainly news. You also know you’d be disappointed in me—not to mention how disappointed I’d be in myself—if we withheld something just because our newspaper was involved.” He nodded his head. She was exactly right. “But I am going to shrink the size of the photo so I can run it side-by-side with the one I took of the new stretch of sidewalk.” She smiled at him. He smiled back, then out the door he went as her fingers began smoking her keyboard again.

  A few minutes later she heard the door open. “Find anything?” she asked, her eyes glued to her computer screen.

  “I certainly did,” a deep silky voice replied. Sharon didn’t have to look up to know who it belonged to. She would recognize that voice anywhere. Colton Craig stood at the counter in front of her desk, his white teeth sparkling through his broad, tan face. “No more searching for me,” he said, his hulking frame nearly looming over her. “It turns out I’ve already located one of the best things about this town.” He extended his strong hand her way. “Miss Teller. Nice to see you again.”

  Sharon hoped he couldn’t hear her heart beating. She hated the way his animal manliness undid her. Hated it! She swallowed and set her mind to business, recalling her last encounter with him. “Mr. Craig,” she said, giving his huge warm hand a brief up-and-down shake, then withdrawing it as though she’d latched onto a hot coal. “The office isn’t open today, but is there something I can help you with?”

  He withheld his words a moment while he allowed his smile to broaden, causing Sharon to swallow again. Then he relaxed his face until it looked all business again. “Friday’s Daily Courier ran a small article about Partonville’s surprise contested election. Since I know you to be a fine reporter with a nose for truth, I was wondering what you thought about our coverage. Did our reporters get the story correct?” Sharon noticed his eyes wandering toward her computer screen which sat at an angle on her desk. She quickly slid her mouse across the mouse pad and minimized the window.

  It distressed her that the Courier had beat them getting the contested election news to print, but nothing could be done about it since the Courier was Hethrow’s daily and the Press only printed twice a week—Sam’s first posters having gone up in windows on Wednesday night, the day the Press came out. “I’d say you got the broad-brush strokes correct,” she said rather curtly, “which is that Sam Vitner is running against Acting Mayor Gladys McKern.”

  His smile broadened, both at the fact she’d closed her computer screen and that she was working so hard not to give him an inch. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to say you as in me, since I build things, I don’t write the Courier’s newspaper articles.” He wore the look of a supremely handsome Cheshire cat as he wove his web of words around her, which she recalled he did with stealth maneuvering the last time she’d interviewed him about his intentions for Partonville.

  I will not be ensnared by you! She stiffened her spine and wiped any evidence of pleasantries off her face. “Since you referred to ‘our reporters,’ I assumed you were speaking for your town in the collective use of the word ‘our.’ And so likewise I responded to you.”

  He chuckled. “Touché.” He rested his forearm on the counter and leaned toward her. “Please forgive my inept attempts to communicate,” he said, leaning in just a tad closer, close enough she could smell his earthy cologne. “How about we start over, okay? I’m not here to spar with you, Ms. Teller. I’ve simply come to the most professional and knowledgeable source available to collect accurate information.”

  Dregs! How mad could she get at a statement like that—a thought which immediately set off her internal BEWARE! alarm again.

  “You can read our comprehensive coverage in tomorrow’s paper, Mr. Craig, which will be nearly a double-sized edition. And now if you will excuse me, I’m working under a very tight deadline.”

  “Well I just wanted to . . .”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but our office is closed and I must ask you to leave now,” she said, resting her fingers back on her keyboard.

  Somebody smack me! , a little voice whispered in her single-and-looking head.

  “Never let it be said I held up progress. Good day, Ms. Teller, and thank you for your time. I look forward to reading your every . . . single . . . word.” Although he spoke in a near monotone, it still came out sultry. How does he do that? she wondered as she shivered when he walked out the door.

  Colton left the Press feeling not the slightest of dings to his ego, even though it was the second time this week he’d virtually been dismissed by a Pardon-Me-Viller. Sharon’s red cheeks and fidgety fingers told him all he needed to know. But moreover, he knew he truly would learn more by reading tomorrow’s Press than talking to her further since he’d analyzed her quite thoroughly (and accurately, as it turned out) the last time they met. She was the type of woman who worked hard to hang on to her emotions, which meant one of the reasons she’d likely gone into journalism was to find a written way to sort and expre
ss them. He imagined in another ten years she might be an intriguing force to be reckoned with, but for now, she was still too much the novice to keep her outward expressions from giving her away. Yes, she would work hard to be fair and square and he would read more about both sides of the electoral coin than if he’d continued pressing her for information today. He’d learned in business that when you force an issue with a weaker player, you usually only got half of the story since the rest of it would be lost in emotional spewing.

  As it turned out, he’d had much more fun verbally sparring with Challie Carter the other day, who was a surprisingly shrewd foe. When Colton first arrived at his farm and told him why he was personally dropping by, Challie let it be known he was “not one bit happy” that Sam had blabbed about Katie’s offer. But on the other hand, he invited the kingpin land developer right into his kitchen saying: “But look what that big mouth brought me.” What Colton didn’t know was that Challie had blabbed to the one person he thought might lure Craig & Craig Developers right to his door again. But not even he had expected it would be Colton Craig himself.

  Their visit was so interesting and lively, in fact, that it got too late to make it to the Press’s office before closing. Finding Sharon there today was a bonus since he expected the office would be closed. But he’d circled the square on his way to take a more careful look at some acreage and noticed the Press’s shades were up, the lights on and Sharon at her desk. He couldn’t stop himself from going in.

  Now as Colton drove on toward the northeastern outskirts of Partonville, he couldn’t help but lust after the extensive breadth of Challie’s land holdings, even if they weren’t contiguous to Hethrow. He’d looked up the plats of survey maps the day after their chat so he could get an overview of all the boundaries, how they might overlap, or not, with his both new and renewed intentions. The few other properties not owned by Challie seemed too far out of the line of a sensible plan for development, but today Colton was taking another thoughtful driving evaluation anyway. Even if this journey bore no new fruit, it was good to know Challie was open enough—or hopefully ticked off enough at Katie’s offer—to actually engage in conversation about “other” possibilities.

  Colton also learned, without asking, that Challie did, in fact, lease and farm the fields on Katie’s Crooked Creek, something he’d also done for Dorothy since her husband died. The fact Challie brought it up let Colton know Challie was fishing for response, too, and perhaps willing to play down and dirty. Challie was a shrewd one all right, Colton thought. It was no wonder Katie hadn’t been able to sew him up yet, since neither had he. Challie also knew how to play his cards close to his vest, yet just far enough away to be within peeking distance, enough peeking distance to draw two seriously interested and bankrolled parties into his hand. No, Challie was no dummy. As he drove along fumbling with maps, stopping occasionally to make sure he was reading correctly, Colton recalled how their conversation had ended.

  “Well, well, well,” Challie said, flicking the toothpick he held in his mouth from one side to the other after they’d bantered like they were old friends, laughed and plied each other for hints of pertinent information for over an hour. He leaned back in his chair, balancing on its back legs. “Two big-money dogs come a-barking at my door.”

  “What if I told you this big dog would let you name your price per acre for all of your properties, Challie?”

  Challie studied him for a moment, tipped back in his chair just far enough so Colton thought he might actually go over backwards. “I’d tell you that you think I’m dumber that I am, and that you’re dumber than I expected for saying such a thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know some pretty high numbers.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as . . .,” Challie said, clamping down on his toothpick before letting his chair lean forward a bit. Then he snickered. “You know, maybe you’d be thinking higher than I’d name and then I would be the dumb one.” Colton laughed. He liked this Challie Carter’s style and intuitive smarts since he had indeed seen that exact scenario play out more than once, although he knew how to make the seller believe they’d taken him. Challie sucked air through his back teeth. “So in light of what we both know to be the truth in your tactics, I say you name a number first and then I’ll see how it compares to my line of thinking . . . and that of the other interested party. Maybe better yet,” he said, allowing his chair legs to thunk to the floor, “I’ll conduct my own auction for the land and see which one of you is the bigger dog after all.”

  Colton fought his reflex to raise an eyebrow, which would reveal how he felt about what would surely be a worst-case scenario. No, he needed to keep the ball in his court. He briefly thought about how he’d lost the Crooked Creek deal to Katie, the way Katie had obviously played to Dorothy’s emotions with that park deal.

  “What’s the most important thing to you, Challie? Money? Timeline? Feeling like you have a say in what will happen to your land once you sell it?”

  “Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Plant it, bulldoze it, build on it, burn it, let it go to seed. Won’t matter a lick to me since I’ll likely be living high on the hog in Florida.”

  Now Colton raised both eyebrows with perfect timing. “Hm. I own a wonderful senior development in Florida, just off that inland coast you like to visit,” which was a little tidbit Colton gleaned when Challie previously talked about his vacations. “I just might be able to swing you a handsome deal.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That, Challie Carter, is a guarantee.”

  Challie eyeballed Colton a good long while, then he stood. “It’s time for you to go, Mr. Craig.”

  Colton didn’t move. He studied Challie’s posture, every detail of the man’s face, trying to get a read on what had transpired, what he might be thinking. Was he mad? Intrigued? The guy must play a lot of poker, he thought, because he revealed absolutely nothing other than how he could walk to the door to usher him out.

  15

  “I don’t know where the time goes,” Delbert said to Katie, his tone sincere and apologetic. “Marianne and I have been meaning to have you and Josh over for dinner since . . . well, since last fall when we learned about . . . us.” He was referring to their discovery in October that they had the same father. Through an old set of letters Katie found after her Aunt Tess died, she worked the pieces of a mental puzzle until the truth was finally revealed, thanks to Dorothy’s courage and faith in God to work the healing.

  “And several times I’ve thought about having your family out to the farm,” she said, sounding neither quite as sincere nor apologetic, since she was loaded for bear after having waited two days to tackle this mess with her son’s driving. “I know your children would probably love to play in the barn.” Delbert and Marianne had two children, a boy and a girl.

  “Probably you, too, huh Uncle Delbert?” Josh, who was seated at the kitchen table with them, asked with a nervous laugh. Delbert nodded his head and gave Josh a sympathetic smile. No, the heavy sense of mission for today’s meeting could not be overcome so easily. They were both in the hot seat with Katie, and they knew it.

  “But then . . . yes, time does slip away,” Katie added. What she didn’t say was that when she had thought about picking up the phone to invite them over, or asking them after church a couple of different Sundays, she’d changed her mind. She just couldn’t force something so personal. The whole situation still felt awkward to her and she didn’t want to be put in the position to have to act like she felt something for a man—a half brother—she was still getting to know as a person. The whole notion of their relationship was still surreal at best, and troubling at worst. How could her mother have deceived her about her father her entire life, taking such a huge truth to the grave with her? How did you overcome the kind of hurt imparted by learning that the same man who raised a son every day of his life never got to know his daug
hter?

  “Well, at least some of us are gathered together here at this table,” Delbert said, “although this doesn’t seem like the ideal circumstances through which to foster our relationship, does it?” Katie’s eyes filled with thunderclouds and she started to open her mouth, but Delbert jumped right in again. As uncomfortable as it was to feel so on the spot, he’d spent a good deal of time thinking and praying about this meeting. He’d concluded a bigger hand than his was at work here. It was time to trust that Voice and proceed with courage. “Let’s just take this one step at a time, Katie. I know it might seem odd, but I believe the truth here is that there is a great blessing for all of us within this unfortunate circumstance.”