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“Maybe he has a foot fetish,” I muttered. Wouldn’t put it past him to be into something freaky.
“Even better!”
“The vomit is literally in my mouth, Minnie.”
Evelyn snorted and exchanged a glance with the tiny elderly lady to her left, who pursed her lips. Ida had been a regular babysitter when I’d first joined the Reeves household. She had a kind heart, but she ruled with an iron fist. Ida gave me a long glance as her hands moved and a work of crocheted art appeared between them. All she said was, “Hmm.”
I straightened, picked up my pathetic granny square, and decided to change the subject. “You’re right, Evelyn. People will want to save the Monticello,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I’ll campaign. I’ll go to the archives and the museum and pull up some interesting tidbits and anecdotes, and people will remember that the architecture of this town is one of the things that makes it so special.” My fingers brushed the soft yarn on my lap and in a small voice, I admitted, “It’s my home I’m really worried about.”
Evelyn paused, meeting my gaze. “He really wants to tear down that beautiful house?”
“That’s what his permit application said.”
Sophie looked at me, concern lining her features. “But you’ve lived there for years.”
It had been a trying twenty-four hours. That’s the only explanation I had for why my eyes suddenly filled with tears, why the thought of that big, arrogant oaf of a man made me feel like curling up in a ball and crying until I felt empty inside.
But when Sophie—sweet, sensitive Sophie—made a noise at the back of her throat, dropped her work, and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, I knew it wasn’t just the stress and shock of what had happened.
He was attacking my town. My home. I’d grown up sure that I’d never belong anywhere, until I met my mom and dad. I was an angry, hurt little kid who hit the jackpot and fell into a loving family. This town wasn’t just a collection of old buildings. It was a patchwork of memories. It was every wound that had scabbed over and healed, every smile, every ounce of joy I’d ever experienced.
Anderson was trying to take that away from me.
That old attic apartment wasn’t just four walls and a roof. It was the only home I’d ever had. My parents managed the property for Lydia Radcliffe while they lived in the ground-floor apartment. That’s where they took me in and showed me that I was worthy of being loved. My dad was a handyman who worked on all of Lydia’s properties, and he taught me everything he could about maintenance.
When I came back to New Elwood after college, I nearly wept when I heard the attic apartment was vacant. It was the place my dad painted with me. The sink was the one he fixed when it started leaking and sprayed all over the place. He watched on while I installed the pendant light above the dining room table. When I was a kid, we found a beautiful old stained glass window at a flea market and installed it above their kitchen sink on the ground floor. The whole building was woven with loving memories of the two people that made me feel whole.
If that house got torn down, I’d lose so much more than a home. I’d lose all those moments where I felt loved and supported, all those memories of my dad’s cheerful encouragement and patient instruction. My mom’s visits, the soft smile on her face when she saw a new piece of decor or a framed photo of the three of us.
More arms appeared around me, and I was wrapped in all the love and support of a bunch of crazy crocheters. It took me a few long moments to gather myself, and I wiped under my eyes while nodding at them all. “I’m fine,” I told their worried faces. “I’m okay.”
“We’re going to get him,” Minnie said, eyes fierce. “We’re going to run that bastard out of town.”
“He’s not tearing down one single brick of this place,” Abigail agreed as she rolled her shoulders as if she’d march over to Anderson’s place and fight him right then.
“I’ll brew some tea,” Evelyn added, and when I gave her a wide-eyed look of horror, she winked, and the heaviness of the moment was broken as we all began to laugh.
The walk home from Minnie’s house was pleasant, with the smell of spring heavy in the air and crickets chirping all around. I walked past trees in full bloom and inhaled their floral perfume while I mulled over this new challenge.
I could either fight Anderson head-on or try to bring him over to my side. My instinct was to fight, because even the thought of softening toward him for a moment made me want to scream. I wanted to rage at him, pummel him into submission.
But my mother always said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, to which I would retort that it seemed pretty disingenuous to catch flies with sweet promises only to let them die a grisly, sticky death for their foolishness. She’d cluck her tongue at me to hide her smile. But maybe she was right. I smiled as an idea sparked.
The wrought-iron fence encircling the cemetery came into view, and I made a slight detour toward it. It was officially closed, but I glanced in both directions before hopping the fence, then padded along the well-groomed paths toward two familiar tombstones.
My heart clenched when I stopped before them. My parents. The only family I’d ever known. Dad would have wrapped his arm around me and kissed my temple while I vented all my anger at him, absorbing it and defusing it with nothing more than a squeeze of my shoulders. Mom would have made me a plate of food and urged me to eat, because nothing good ever came from being hungry and mad, so you might as well fix the first while you worked through the second.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to them, and I wasn’t even sure what I meant by it. But with one last breath of the cool nighttime air, I stiffened my spine. This wasn’t a lost cause. My fight wasn’t over before it began. I could save the theater, my home, my job, and any other building Anderson tried to destroy.
I’d try to play nice, just like Mayor Greene had said. I’d work with Anderson for the month. And in that month, I’d show him just how much he’d underestimated me. Lull him into a false sense of security, then bam! Hit him where it hurts.
Starting tonight.
EIGHT
CHARLIE
I had a Ziploc bag full of individually portioned homemade chocolate chip cookies in my freezer, not because I was some sort of domestic goddess, but because one of my best friends was Sophie Stephens. She was an amazing baker who not only ran one of the major tourist draws in town, the Magnolia Café, but she also kept me well-supplied with emergency cookies.
