by Molly Harper
I didn’t see Will for the better part of a week. But word of my “meddling” seemed to have spread throughout town. My debit card was declined at the Piggly Wiggly. The gas pumps magically stopped working when I tried to fill up at the Gas’n’Go. My application for a post office box was rejected. I didn’t know it was possible for that to happen unless you were suspected of smuggling drugs into the country. Apparently Norma, the postmaster, thought I looked shifty because I dared to fill out the application on a Saturday.
I was fortunate that Miss Martha, quote, “didn’t give a damn what everybody else thought” as long as I didn’t mess with the thermostat. But it still stung when I walked into the Dinner Bell and was met with total silence. You know that paranoid feeling you get when you walk into a room and a conversation suddenly stops? So much worse when multiplied by an entire room of people who develop a sudden, keen interest in their blue plate specials.
My stomach growled at the scent of frying bacon and hot bread wafting out of the cloudy glass front door. I claimed an empty booth, placed my order with an indifferent waitress named Chrissy, and sipped the strong black coffee . . . which I promptly spit back into my cup when I saw the front page of the Mud Creek Ledger at another table.
It was my face, bug-eyed and faintly swollen, as if I’d been crying. And there seemed to be smoke rolling behind me in the background. I bolted up from the table, digging through my pockets as I ran to the front of the diner, where a battered red metal box sold copies of the Ledger.
I put a quarter in the slot, but like most things in this town, the machine was out of order, and it dropped open before I could complete my payment. I frowned down at the front page headline: STATE TOURISM OFFICIAL DERAILS PLAN TO SAVE TOWN. Somehow, Will must have snapped a photo during my roadside breakdown, because there I was above the fold, pale and stricken in blurry dot-matrix print.
Well, that explained why everybody had stopped talking when I walked into the diner. Clearly these people were Ledger subscribers. I wanted to cover my face with the newspaper, run to the car, and hide. And then cry. With ice cream.
And I almost did exactly that. I’d turned my feet toward my borrowed bug and was searching my pockets for the keys when I saw Will’s truck rumble down the street and circle into the Dinner Bell parking lot. I froze. If I left now, he would see me running, and he would know that he’d gotten to me. I couldn’t have that.
I tucked the paper under my arm, ignoring the stares of the other patrons as I scurried back to my table. My pancakes were waiting for me. I made a sort of meditation exercise out of buttering them and running rivers of syrup over the fluffy golden layers before I could face the newspaper story.
I took a bite, and then a deep breath, and skimmed the first paragraph.
Plans to build a factory that would provide more than three hundred jobs to the town’s underemployed citizens have been put on hold indefinitely as city officials deal with Kentucky Commission on Tourism historian Bonnie Turkle, who has appropriated the property as a historic landmark.
And that was the nicest thing the reporter had to say about me. There were subtle digs at the uselessness of my project. How it would be very comforting to know that the town’s musical heritage was being preserved when its citizens had to move out of town to find employment elsewhere. How it would have been nice for the citizens to get some input in how said musical heritage would be treated. (Okay, they may have had a point there.) And there were several comments from random citizens doubting whether an “outsider” would be able to do McBride’s justice. The article stated that I was unavailable for comment. I didn’t recall getting any phone calls the night before.
Whoever R. M. Fitzpatrick was, we were going to have some words. And a lot of them were going to have four letters. Okay, I would have Kelsey write some down for me. She was way better at that sort of thing. Did he let Will dictate his story to him word for word? What happened to a free, unbiased press?
The story included a “see also Letters to the Editor” reference leading me to the editorial page. Will had written an open letter to each and every one of the sponsors on the list he’d taken during our argument, detailing why the town had no need for a music museum, the long and varied list of other uses the citizens had for the property, and the “underhanded, deceptive practices” I’d used to swipe the music hall property out from under him. The letter closed with, “The people of Mud Creek don’t need Ms. Turkle’s meddling condescension. She believes she is trying to preserve some sort of mystical historical mecca, but in her ill-informed, addlepated liberal stubbornness, she is singlehandedly destroying an entire town.”
The editor’s note stated that the letter had been sent to each of the sponsors’ corporate offices, but that at the time of publication, Mayor McBride had not received any responses. I wanted to curl up in the booth and die. Or possibly tunnel my way out under the table. All of the people in this room had most likely read the article, and it was even more likely that they felt the same way Will did.
This is what happened when I messed around with the forces of karma.
“Don’t take the newspaper story too personal,” Jenny Lee told me, appearing at the end of my table. “When I was runnin’ for office, Rosemarie had the nerve to bring up my ‘inappropriate interactions with fellow students’ under the bleachers when we were all in high school. She’s a grudge holder, which is a shame when it’s combined with a long memory and overactive typing fingers.”
“Rosemarie?” I asked, tipping my head to the side.
“‘R. M. Fitzpatrick,’” she said, slinging her hip into the seat opposite me while making air quote fingers. “The reporter Will got to write the newspaper article about ya. Awful picture, by the way.”
Oh, so “he” was a “she.” And she was sort of mean. I felt a low-burning flash of irritation with Will for having done exactly what I suspected him of doing. It really sucked to have my expectations fulfilled. “Why would she do that for Will?”
Jenny Lee waved to an older waitress with a thin frame and fantastic black cat’s-eye glasses. The henna-haired waitress, whose name was Florence, poured Jenny Lee a cup of decaf and gave me a warm smile. “Honey, you may not hear this from a lot of people, but I’m glad you’re saving the old place. I had my first date at McBride’s. Jimmy Yancey. Boy had hands like an octopus. Just when I thought I’d blocked one, there was another on my rear.”
My eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry.”
Florence smirked. “Don’t be. I married him.”
I stared up at her, unsure how to respond to that. She winked at me. “Well, I’m glad you’re here to save it, honey. Even if it does destroy the town’s chances of bouncing back.” She smiled blithely and drifted away from us, leaving me to drop my head to the table.
“I have a feeling I’m going to be getting a lot more of that sort of response,” I muttered into the Formica. She tapped a finger on my head, forcing me to look up at her.
“There you are. As I was sayin’, part of Rosemarie’s long memory includes holding on to hopeless crushes she had in high school,” she said as Will casually strolled into the diner, waving at his many admirers.
“And Will knew that,” I grunted, ripping open a cup of creamer, which splashed all over the table. I sighed, wiping up the spill with a few napkins. I tried again, only to lose my grip on the tiny plastic cup and send it flying across the table. Jenny Lee caught it with deft fingers, one corner of her lush mouth lifting.
“Taking out your frustrations on innocent nondairy products?” she asked.
“It’s better than taking it out on bystanders.” I glared up at the errant mayor as he sidled up to the counter and chatted casually with Fred, as if he weren’t late for an appointment with me, as if he couldn’t see me sitting here waiting for him.
“I don’t think so,” Jenny Lee said placidly, stirring sugar into her cup. “When I’m having a bad day
, I just take the cruiser to the exit ramp, fire up the laser gun, and issue a few tickets to out-of-towners.”
“That seems . . . wrong.”
She shrugged. “Eh, new cruiser has to be paid for somehow. Besides, if they weren’t speeding, I wouldn’t have anything to ticket them for.”
“Moral relativism is a slippery slope, Sheriff,” I said drily as I stared holes into Will’s back.
Jenny Lee chuckled, glancing over her shoulder toward the counter. “Well, why don’t you go over there and drag Will’s butt to this table? I think you’ve taken out the best part of your anger on the creamer.”
“It’s cute that you think that,” I told her. Over the top edge of the paper, I watched Will wander through the diner glad-handing and being all “hail fellow well met.” He shook every hand, slapped every back, and had something clever to say to each and every diner. I couldn’t help but notice that like most of the female patrons, my waitress, Chrissy, became a lot less indifferent at the sight of the mayor. She straightened her maroon Dinner Bell T-shirt and fluffed her hair in anticipation of her turn.
I rolled my eyes. I’d been wrong before when I’d dubbed him the Roadside Cowboy and thought him a rare breed. I’d definitely met his type before, time and time again while bouncing around the state—cocky, self-assured, and absolute hell to deal with. How did they always end up elected to public office?
I grumbled into my pancakes, lamenting the inherent flaws in the democratic system and its tendency to attract douche bags, which prevented me from hearing Will’s work boots clomping across the tile floor.
“Hey, you saw the newspaper,” he said, as if he were discussing some front-page puff piece and not the possible implosion of my project and career.
“You are such an . . . A-hole,” I bit out as harshly as I could manage.
Jenny Lee eyed Will as she pushed up from her seat, carefully negotiating her gun belt around the edge of the table. “Don’t screw this up.”
“Nice hatchet job in the paper,” I hissed.
He tucked his sunglasses into the pocket of his blue flannel shirt. I really didn’t want to notice that the color made his eyes look like forget-me-nots. “I don’t write for the paper. Except for the letter to the editor, of course. I don’t control the press.”
“No, but you took a very nice photo,” I shot back, jabbing my finger at the offending snapshot. “When did you even have time to take that without my noticing?”
“I thought it captured your best side.”
“So, in good faith, I tell you that I’m trying to find sponsors to help move the building to another location and you take that as an opportunity to write to those sponsors and prevent me from possibly getting any help from them? Are you at all familiar with the expression ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’?”
“Well, I figured rather than waitin’ for you to maybe find a solution that would help us out of this situation that you created, I would just get rid of the situation altogether. At this point, I would think it would be easier to walk away, before ya get started.”
“You’re the devil,” I told him.
He grinned at me. “But a handsome devil.”
I smiled sweetly and said, in a voice loud enough that the people in the next booth could hear, “I think you should know that I will do everything I can to work with you and create the best possible solution to this situation.” I leaned in close enough to whisper, so that only he could hear, “But I am going to get you for this. You won’t know when it’s coming, but one day soon, you will be in the kind of pain that only a professional therapist can help you recover from. And you will know that we’re even.”
“Gosh, you’re cute when you’re mad. Yeow!” he yelped when I pressed a fork into the back of his hand. He snatched it back, rubbing the circulation back into his skin. “Well, excuse me for interrupting your breakfast.” He turned and waved to someone sitting at the lunch counter. “I just wanted to introduce you to Gary Baker and Bess Hansen,” he said. Behind him, a tall guy around Will’s age with thick dark hair under a green hat reading MUD CREEK MUSTANGS stood, staring through me. Bess was a curvy redhead with an anxious expression. She glanced around the diner like she was afraid she would get in trouble for talking to me.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, glancing up at them, wary about the direction of this conversation.
Will stood and clapped Gary on the back. What the hell was with this back-clapping thing? “I went to school with Gary. He’s a great guy. Bess had a crush on him since we were kids and only worked up the nerve to tell him about it last year. Gary and Bess would love to get married, but both of them got laid off when the GloboMap factory shut down. They don’t want to start their lives together without prospects, ya know. And they would have gotten jobs at the plant, but now they’re going to have to leave town.”
I narrowed my eyes at Will and attempted to melt his face with the power of my mind, like in that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
“Nice to meet you,” I said awkwardly. Gary started to say something, then harrumphed and turned toward the front of the diner, taking Bess’s hand as he passed. She waved timidly over her shoulder, her expression shifting from anxious to pitying. That stung a little.
Will smiled blithely as he waved over a man in his late thirties with sandy brown hair and enormous bags under his dark eyes. This was a man who spent a lot of nights worrying instead of sleeping. I sighed, trying not to let my irritation show. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that Will was using him as an object lesson. “Bert and his wife, Cindy, and their two kids lost their house last year. They’re livin’ in a guest room in his parents’ house. They were hopin’ to move out next year when they got jobs at the new factory. Now . . . who knows?”
He waved over another guy, stubby and jowled, with a baleful glitter to his gaze as he approached the table. “Clint here used to manage the GloboMap plant. He got exactly jack squat for a severance because he spent so much time tryin’ to make sure his employees were taken care of that he pissed off the corporate bigwigs. Still, he got a good enough reference from his immediate supervisor that he was supposed to be fast-tracked for management at the ComfyCheeks plant. Clint is the proud father of four, two of whom started college this year.”
“Six,” Clint said, his eyes never leaving mine as Will spoke.
Will raised his brows, turning to Clint. “Sorry?”
“Father of six,” Clint said gruffly. “Melissa’s pregnant again. Just found out we’re having twins.”
“Congratulations,” Will said, patting his shoulder with a sympathetic air.
The corner of Clint’s mouth lifted, as if he was pleased about the development but was too cautious to show it. He snapped out of his reverie to give me a pointed look. “Well, it will be interesting figurin’ out how to feed them, that’s for sure.”
“Give Melissa my best,” Will said, shaking Clint’s hand. He turned toward the counter and lifted his hand to wave someone else over. I grabbed his hand and pressed it against the table. A pleasant little hum of electricity zipped up my arm and spread across my chest. He locked eyes with me, a confused grimace twisting his mouth just before I snatched my hand back.
“Stop,” I growled. “Stop the parade of people who want to bury me in an abandoned outhouse somewhere. What’s next? Are you going to gather all of the children of the people whose lives I’ve ‘ruined’ together to sing ‘We Are the World’? I get it. You’re upset with me.”
Will pursed his lips. “Somehow, that just doesn’t cut it. The thing is that you think of yourself as outside of this problem, like it doesn’t affect you. And I will guarantee that it does. I want you to see these aren’t nameless, faceless numbers. These are people with families and homes they’re going to lose. When towns fail like this, it’s just a matter of dominos falling. One business closes. And then another and another, until all you�
��re left with are empty storefronts and crumbling houses. And this is a hell of a domino you just kicked over.”
“I understand that. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to cause problems. But there are good reasons to consider restoration instead of demolition. Diversifying your employment pool, bringing outside money into the economy, preserving a little piece of local culture. I am willing to work with you on this,” I said in a low voice. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”
He scoffed, grinning as if my calling him a jerk was hilarious. And I couldn’t help but be a little dazzled by that smile, even through the anger. It was like dark clouds parting to make way for . . .
“Let there be light!” I exclaimed, my whole body jerking as I had an actual lightbulb moment.
“Oh, now you’re God?” he huffed, rolling his eyes and rubbing at his leg where I’d kicked it. Several diners at the surrounding tables turned to watch our exchange, their conversations bleeding away so they could hear us better.
“Sorry,” Will told them, waving them off. “She’s nuts. Go about your business.”
I kicked him again, not so accidentally. “No! Let there be light. I know where that comes from.”
He scowled, moving his legs out of my range. “Yeah, it’s the Bible, hence the God joke.”
“No, there’s a carving on the front of the library, ‘Let there be light,’” I said, scrolling down the screen of my phone so I could google the Bothwell library system. The screen got stuck on a rotating hourglass screen because there was no 4G access in this area. I sighed, dropping the phone back into my purse. “It’s been bothering me every time I visit Miss Earlene, just gnawing at the corner of my brain like one of those little bugs in Star Trek. ‘Let there be light’ is what Jackson Bothwell had carved into a lot of the libraries he had built in the late 1880s to early 1920s. He built thousands of them, including something like thirty in Kentucky. The fact that yours is still standing is sort of remarkable. Smaller towns, where the governments can’t afford to keep them maintained, have been forced to tear them down.”