“Well, I just might,” Sandy said. “Too much hot air in here. I’d be better outside,” he added with a glance at the window, but the glance stuck. He focused, frowned, craned his neck. “What is this—‘take a walk in the meadow day’? It isn’t five yet. What in the hell are they doing out there?”
James looked outside, as did everyone else in the room. At first glance, it did appear that people were just walking across the grass. Second glance showed them not to be walking once they reached the point directly in front of the windows. They were turning and staring up.
James exchanged questioning looks with Annie, but she shook her head, as mystified as he.
Sandy grinned. “There. You see? Don’t know how they found out about this meeting, but they’re not buying what James is trying to sell.” He leaned forward, hands on the table, piercing eyes going from face to face. “Because that’s what he’s doing—trying to sell you a bill of goods. My eldest son sees the writing on the wall. He knows his time here is limited.”
James didn’t reply. Nor did he back down. “Annie, please. You first.” He sat down and watched her rise, and for a minute, he was startled all over again. The Annie Barnes they all remembered from the past was worlds away from the attractive and sophisticated woman who stood here now. Her clothes were perfect for the occasion, her hair was perfect, her face was perfect. Even her tone of voice, with its tentative start, was perfect. Had she come on too strong too soon, people would have called her arrogant. Starting this way, she seemed more committed than seasoned and therein genuine.
He loved her honesty. He truly did.
She began with mention of her mother’s death, but gained strength as she mentioned the people in town with whom she had talked, the physical problems they faced, their reluctance to blame the mill, and their reasons for it. She brought a personal touch to the less personal lists he had produced, and grew even more impassioned when she began speaking of Phoebe. And that was the thing that worked best—the passion. James knew everything she was going to say, but found himself rapt. He loved that passion. He couldn’t doubt that she cared for the people in town or that she valued her family. She told of the Middle River Women in Business, ran through dates of their meetings at the Clubhouse prior to the fire, and gave an update of the subsequent decline in health of each attendee. She produced her mother’s notebook, read the entry telling of Phoebe’s presence at that one fateful meeting, spoke of miscarriages and recent illness. By the time she finished telling of Phoebe’s tests in New York, the first of the treatments here in Middle River, and the latest lab results, the room was silent.
By then, the crowd outside had swelled. James didn’t know if this was good or bad.
Sandy didn’t seem to notice the crowd. He was too busy being smug. “Well, we certainly know why she sells books. She tells a good tale.”
James came to his feet. “No tale,” he said, impassioned himself now. “It’s the truth, which brings us full circle.” He shot a thumb toward the window. “We can’t do a goddamned thing about the people from th’other side who eat fish from the river after they’ve been told not to, but when we let people send their children daily to a building that we know sits on a powder keg, that’s immoral. When we let people suffer without the medical care they could have if only they had a clue to what’s wrong, that’s immoral. Some of it can’t be fixed. We can’t do anything about the McCreedys’ autistic son. That kind of in utero damage is permanent, but we can help with his education and set up a fund to help support him—”
“We’re doing that!” Sandy said.
“—and we can let Emily McCreedy know that her asthma’s from chronic mercury poisoning, and that maybe, just maybe, there’s a treatment for it.”
“Ah, Christ, James,” Sandy cried, throwing a hand up in exasperation. “What’re you going to do—tell the world the truth and have panic here and downriver and everywhere else that people want something to blame for their being sick?”
“If I have to, I will,” James vowed. “We can either do this thoroughly but quietly, or we can open it up and make a big noise. Your choice.”
“My choice? Forget mercury. The truth can kill people. Tell them the truth in this case, and that’ll be the end of the mill. Don’t you care about that? Doesn’t it matter? Or are you just as happy to pack up that little girl, who isn’t going to fit in here anyway, and move on?”
James was livid. “That little girl is my daughter.”
“Your adopted daughter,” Sandy clarified coolly.
“No,” James stated and looked slowly away from his father and toward the others in the room. “Mia is my daughter. Her mother is a woman I was with for six years—”
Sandy cut in. “Did any of us ever see this woman he was with for six years?” He rolled his eyes.
“Oh, she was here,” James said, still speaking to the board. “She was here on three different occasions, and on each she was made to feel like such a non-person by my good father that she swore she would never return.” His gaze locked with Sam Winchell’s. “I’m Mia’s biological father. I have sole custody, because April wouldn’t live here and I couldn’t leave, which tells you what I feel for this town. So go ahead. Print any or all of the above in the Times. I’m tired of playing Sandy’s game. And while you’re at it—”
“James…” Sandy warned.
But James was beyond restraint. “—while you’re at it, you can print the fact that my mother is alive and well and happily married to a far better man than the one at the head of this table. And that,” he said, oblivious to the reaction of those listening, “brings me to the reason why my college roommate is here. Ben happens to be one of the best legal specialists in the country when it comes to family businesses. His work involves psychology as much as it does law, and he’s been talking to me for a while, counseling me on how to try to get my father to understand how bad this whole mercury thing is, but Sandy refuses to see. It’s my way or the highway, he says, and that would be fine, if hundreds of people in this town weren’t in need of help. So we’re going to help them.”
“Like hell we are,” Sandy said, though with less force than before. He was looking out the window, seeming confused.
James remained focused on the board. “We’re going down through our lists, making sure that the people who can be helped will be helped, that the others are compensated, and that every last bit of mercury waste is removed.”
“You’ll have lawsuits,” Lowell warned.
“Not if we do this right,” James said, “and we have the money for it, with plenty to spare for future growth of the mill. Don’t you see,” he asked now of the others, “that it’s the right thing to do? The mill has a moral obligation to come clean.”
“Over my dead body,” Sandy vowed, but he sounded tired. He was still looking out the window.
Now James turned to look. He must have reacted somehow, because suddenly everyone else was looking, too, including those on the far side of the table, now rising to see what was out on the lawn.
The crowd had grown. It covered most of the immediate area, stretching from side to side, but even more striking was the sign they had raised. There was only one. It, too, stretched from side to side, with letters large enough to be read from the boardroom with ease.
WE WANT A CLEAN MIDDLE RIVER, it said.
Annie was clutching James’s arm. “Do you see who’s there?” she asked softly, excitedly.
James nodded. Front and center, he saw Sabina and Phoebe. But he also saw the McCreedys. He saw the Albans and the Dahills. He saw Ian Bourque, John DeVoux, and Caleb Keene. He saw people from both sides of the river, sick ones, well ones, ones who worked at the mill and ones who did not. The implication, of course, was that if push came to shove, these people would fight the mill.
Looking back at his father, he saw that Sandy understood it, too. In that handful of minutes, he had grown smaller and paler. And suddenly James was saddened. He disagreed with Sandy on most everything important, but the man
was still his father.
“I don’t want this done over your dead body,” he said as though he and Sandy were alone in the room. “What I want is a clearheaded transition, with everyone’s needs respected.” He reached over to take the folder Ben held. Opening it, he pushed it to the center of the table. “These papers specify that you’ll stay on as chairman of the board, but that I’ll be named president and CEO.”
Sandy looked stunned. “Christ,” he murmured, “that gives you all the power.”
James remained silent.
Aidan had been looking at his father, clearly waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, he turned on James. “What about me?”
“What about you?” James replied.
“I’m in line for what you’re taking.”
“You’ll stay where you are,” James said. “You’re a good front man.”
“But you’re taking what’s mine.”
James might have pointed out that he was only taking back what had been his. But it was beside the point. “This is for the good of the mill. We need a change in leadership, if for credibility alone. Those people out there? Look at them. They have power by dint of sheer numbers, and they’re right—we have to clean up the mess we made. This isn’t about you or me, Aidan, and it isn’t about Sandy. It’s about Middle River. As the mill goes, so goes the town. It’s as simple as that.”
Chapter 29
MY HEART WAS chock-full. I don’t know how else to describe what I felt when I saw all those people with their sign. Not only had I not been expecting them, but, sitting in that anteroom and wondering if Phoebe’s case alone could do it, I had been thinking that Grace was right, that small-town people were small-minded people who were just stubborn enough to keep their ugly little secrets even when it went against their own self-interest.
Yet there they were out there on the lawn, people who had no idea what James had planned but who were putting their jobs at stake nonetheless. In all the running around I had done Saturday and Sunday, visiting dear friends and favorite haunts in Washington, I hadn’t felt the sheer joy I felt now.
So there was the sign on the lawn—literally and figuratively, the writing on the wall for Sandy Meade. And here on the table were the agreements James would insist Sandy sign. And in their elegant upholstered chairs were the board members, alternately looking subdued, cautious, or, in Sam’s case, barely restrained. And Aidan was clearly dying.
I wanted to stay. I wanted to see Sandy sign those agreements with my own two eyes. I wanted to watch Aidan swallow the bitter pill he deserved. I wanted to throw my arms around James, give him a hug (maybe even a kiss, if he was amenable to that in front of others), and tell him how good this all felt.
I did none of the above, because James asked me to leave. He did it politely—“Annie, we need privacy now”—and I understood. The tone he set in his first few moments at the helm was crucial. There was no place here for a nonlawyer, non–board member, non–Middle Riverite. There was no place here for a novelist, much less the protégée of Grace Metalious.
That was the bad news. The good news was that I didn’t have to wait in the anteroom like a good little girl. I got to go outside.
That was where things got really weird. I had been calm through my presentation to the board. I had no illusions about the men in that room. Other than James and Sam (and Ben, whom I’d only just met), I had no friends here. Nor did I wish to. I could present the facts as I saw them, with the emotion that I felt, and that was that. It was like when I stood at a podium, a successful author talking to hundreds of people at a charity dinner, I could keep my cool because my audience was largely nameless.
Out here was something else. I went out the front door of the handsome redbrick Cape and walked around to the back on a paved path. But when the people came into sight—actually, when I came into their sight—I felt a qualm. This was their victory, far more than mine. I had come here simply to find out why my mother had been sick.
I had already stopped. Now I took several steps back. That was when Sabina spotted me. She was with Phoebe—had an arm around her waist in support, because Phoebe was still far from well. Moving as a pair under Sabina’s guidance, they broke from the crowd and came toward me. Their faces held a look of victory, even defiance, but it went only so far. Only then did it occur to me that they didn’t have the foggiest idea of what had gone on upstairs.
Taking a deep breath, I raised my brows, pressed my lips together, and nodded.
Two sisters, two relieved sighs, one grand whoop of delight (this, from Sabina). Then it seemed they were running, though I know Phoebe barely had the strength, but in the next instant we were hugging, all three of us, sharing victory for what I do believe was the very first time in our lives.
“Sharing” was the operative word here, of course. We’d each had victorious moments in our lives—weddings for my sisters, childbirth for Sabina, best-sellerdom for me, to name a few. But we had never “shared” a victory, in the sense of feeling it equally with each other—in fact, feeling it all the more because we were with each other.
To this day, we’ve never talked about it. As close as we became in the months following the takeover of the mill, some things remained unsaid. I think we simply wanted to enjoy the closeness without analyzing it to death.
But back to that afternoon. The three of us had barely had our moment when others were beside us, asking about the meeting, giving joyous shouts of their own. I was hugged by more people in that short time, many of whose names I didn’t even know, than I had been hugged by even during the last breast cancer walk that I did. Have you ever done one of those? I can’t begin to describe the feeling of solidarity. Hugging is its outward show.
Well, solidarity was what we had there in Middle River that afternoon. We felt the heat of the air, smelled the warmth of the grass, the dampness of the river, the sweetness of the leaves on the trees on its banks. The smell of the fire lingered, but it had fallen behind those other, more potent and heavenly smells.
And the neat thing was that the men in that conference room didn’t know any of it. All they knew was that the crowd had dispersed. They were embroiled in signing their papers and agreeing to change. By the time the meeting adjourned, we were gone.
Well. I say we in the communal sense. I didn’t leave. I couldn’t. I just sat in my car while the last of the Middle Riverites returned to their lives, just sat there with the top down and the sun, no longer oppressive, listing toward the treetops to the west of my car. I pulled the pins from my hair and let my fingers be a brush.
Annie.
Shhhh.
Putting on sunglasses, I waited and watched and wondered who would be first to leave and what his mood would be.
Ben was the first. He had a plane to catch, but he saw me in the car behind his, trotted back, and gave me a peck on the cheek. He was pleased about the meeting’s outcome. No doubts about that.
Annie.
Not now, I insisted.
Sam was next. One step out the door and he lit a cigar. I suspected he was as relieved by that as by what had happened inside. He was in his car, backing out of his parking place, before he spotted me. Then he drove right over and stopped, door to door.
“That was something,” he said around the cigar.
“Good, don’t you think?” I asked.
“Good, I do think.” He looked at me with affection. “If your mother could have seen you today, she’d have been proud.”
My throat closed up. I couldn’t answer. Glassy-eyed, I smiled my thanks. His remark meant more than he could know.
“I have copy to write,” he said on a lighter note. “Want to help?”
I shook my head.
“Didn’t think so,” he said. He winked at me, put his car in gear, and stepped on the gas.
Yes, my mother would have been proud. I was a minute in recovering from that realization. It helped that Aidan and Sandy were the next to leave the building. They kept me from having to hear Gra
ce. Aidan strode out in obvious anger, slammed into that bold black SUV, and left rubber on the road. It was juvenile, but not at all surprising. Aidan was used to getting his way. For perhaps the first time in his life, he had not.
Sandy was more restrained, but his disappointment was no less marked. His shoulders were slack, his steps were slower, his movements—hand on the sedan door, body folding into the seat, head bowing once he was inside—were tired. I knew that had things gone just a hair differently, he would have been inside at this very moment, as determined as ever to keep Middle River in the dark about what ailed it.
I could never feel for this man, as I knew James did. But I could acknowledge the passing of an era.
Sandy drove off. Eyes on the door, I waited.
Annie.
I tried to ignore her.
Why won’t you let me speak? We’re friends.
You’re my past, maybe even my present, but this is about the future.
I just want you to know…just want you to know…
I was distracted then, because Cyrus and Harry left. Looking somber, they exchanged several words before each disappeared in his own car and drove away. It was another five minutes before Brad left, and then another five before Lowell left. Not long after that, Marshall Greenwood came from the back of the building. Deep in thought, he eased himself into the cruiser and drove off without ever seeing me there.
And still I waited—waited and wondered—until James finally emerged.
Chapter 30
NICOLE HAD taken a sick day. She was still trying to process what had happened between Aidan and her, was trying to figure out how she felt about it and what it meant for her job. Aidan had been calling all morning, alternately angry and apologetic, but she had no desire to see him. She did go to a friend’s house for lunch, though, and once word spread that she wasn’t working, her home phone rang off the hook. So she knew exactly what was about to happen at Northwood, and even then she had no intention of going anywhere near the place.
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