It’s a perfectly ordinary night at the bar. Even though the cat’s so far out of the bag as to render the very notion of bags immaterial, she doesn’t tell the guys about the dam. She’s sorry, of course she is, about their jobs and their plans. She wants to let them be hopeful a little while longer. She’s not worried—she’s certain as sunrise Omar will pick her over Nathan Templeton a thousand times in a thousand—but she’s maybe a little bit worried. For their part, the guys are just happy to be back in her good graces. It’s a quiet evening.
Toward closing, the door opens, and Nora’s head bobs up and her eyes light, but it’s not Omar. It’s a face no one’s ever seen in here before.
River.
At first only his head and shoulders come in. His legs and torso remain outside. But the cold air is earning him dirty looks—that’s not the only reason maybe, but it’s the one he can address—so he comes all the way in and lets the door close behind him.
But before it even meets the jamb, Nora’s pointing back out. “You can’t be in here.”
He raises his hands. “I know. I’m sorry. I know. I just wanted to talk to her.”
Me. He’s pointing at me.
“No.” Nora shakes her head. “No way. You’re not twenty-one. Get out of here.”
If River were a hundred and eight, she still wouldn’t let him in this bar. But the rest of it’s not her decision. He turns, cowed and embarrassed, and walks back out the door. And I start after him.
“Mirabel!” Nora gasps. The Get back here young lady! she’d roar if she could is all over her face, but she can’t say that to me. That’s not how it works between us, but more importantly, she and I have fought so long and so hard to make it possible for me to flout my mother’s wishes and storm away from her in a fit of pique to follow a boy she disapproves of. However much it looks like heartbreak, this is a moment of triumph. Also a moment of triumph. “No,” she says, but it sounds more like Please.
I don’t ignore her. I meet her eyes. And I tell them the truth of it with mine: I have to. I have to go.
A small sound escapes from deep inside her, but she can’t utter the words she longs to any more than I can.
I press the wall switch to open the door and follow River out into the night.
Outside it’s cold, dry and windless and star-scattered, but I am warm, deep in the bones warm, deep in my muscles even. He’s come to find me. He’s come to me.
The first thing he says is “Thank you, Mirabel.”
I shiver and nod.
“Thank you for meeting me. Thank you for talking to me.”
I start down the sidewalk, away from the bar. He follows.
“I know my dad came to your house. I’m sorry.”
“For what?” my Voice asks, and he nods. Yes. That’s the right question.
“I’m sorry I told him. I didn’t mean to.”
We don’t really know each other very well, but even still, River can read the skepticism on my face. How does something like that happen accidentally?
“Yeah, okay. I guess I mean I didn’t plan to. I know I promised not to tell, but deep down my father’s a good guy. I knew he’d find out eventually, so I just thought I could, I don’t know, spare everyone the suspense.”
I close my eyes then open them to type, “We wanted the suspense.”
“I know.” He looks away from me to explain, “My parents were fighting all the time. My grandfather kept screaming at my dad about how no one can know this big, stupid secret I know they already know. I just…”
He trails off, so I don’t get to hear exactly how he was planning to finish that sentence, but I know the sentiment: I just picked my father over your sister. I just put my feelings over your needs. I just chose what’s easy right now instead of what’s right and two decades in the making. I’m just sixteen, far from home, with sense enough to see I’m in over my head but not very much else. I’m just sixteen and have no idea what it means to love someone, and anyone who thinks I do is deluding herself.
“I didn’t know what to do.” He looks up and meets my eyes again. “I’m sorry for everything, Mirabel.”
He should not be sorry for everything. It’s not all his fault. It’s not all Mab’s fault certainly. It’s not all his father’s fault or even all his father’s fault. It’s not all Omar’s fault for believing them all those years ago or all the Groves’ fault for selling them the land. It’s not the barflies’ fault for dropping the suit or Russell’s for keeping his distance. It’s not the river’s fault for being so easily diverted or the dam’s for holding so much back.
There are so many people who have sinned a little and a lot. There are so many people who deserve some of the blame. But that means there is never anyone whose responsibility it is to take responsibility. There is no one who must make it right, no one who must make amends. There is so much, therefore, that stays wrong and unmended.
River should not be sorry for everything. But he should be sorry for some things.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” he says.
“Me neither,” my Voice admits.
“I don’t know what can happen next.”
I nod and wait. Shiver and wait.
“I didn’t betray her,” he says. “Not really. You know it’s not that simple.”
I do not know that. But I know what he means.
There’s a pause, and then he says, very quietly, “You’re all I have here.” He does not mean me. He means us. He means Mab. “I’m worried I ruined everything.”
For whom? I wonder, but my Voice replies, “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
* * *
At Norma’s door I find Omar taking deep breaths, psyching himself up to go in.
“Mirabel!” He looks surprised to see me—must wonder what I’m doing on this side of the door as much as I’m wondering what he is—but asks like it’s the most everyday of pleasantries, “Headed in?”
I nod, and he taps the push plate to open the door and follows me in.
Nora’s head snaps up. Her face washes white with relief to see me, edged with confused gratitude to find me with Omar instead of with River.
She turns to him first. “Thanks for bringing her home.” She gives him the smile they’ve been exchanging this week—tentative, possible—and tables for the moment the clamoring teeming swarms of questions.
“Anytime,” he says.
And then me. She exercises restraint. “You okay?” She looks me all over.
My eyes assure her I’m fine.
“We closed three and a half minutes ago.” Her exactness makes her sound like her middle daughter, and she pretends she’s admonishing Omar, the lone customer in the bar, but I know this is directed at me: You were gone a long time.
“Is it too late to get a soda?” Omar asks.
She pours it for him, and he stirs it with a swizzle stick. She starts cleaning up, glancing at him, glancing at me, holding her tongue, doing her job.
“Listen, Nora.” She stops drying the glass in her hand and turns to him. Me too, I’m alarmed at once. It’s his tone. His eyes too: sorry, bated. How can this night be about to get more strange? “Nathan Templeton came to see me.”
She exhales. Already? “Me too.”
He nods. He knew this. “He showed me the test results. Did he show you?”
“Well he gave them to me.” A laugh small and dry as an almond. “He told me what they said,” she adds. “Not that I … you know.”
Omar nods again. He does know. He takes a breath. “He’s not his father, Nora.”
She looks away from him. “I know.”
“What he says those tests prove may or may not be true,” he admits, and her eyes spark with gratitude, but he keeps talking and they dim again, “but everything else he says is. We do need the jobs. We do need the opportunities. We do need the growth.” He pauses, then adds, “Reopening the plant is what lots of folks in this town need and want.”
“Think they need,”
Nora amends. “Think they want.”
“Nora, I read through his binder.” There’s an edge in his voice, a warning not that what’s coming is bad, but that it’s good, which is worse. “The test results are impressive. Reassuring. It seems like he’s done his homework. And if the GL606 is fixed—”
“A big if,” she interrupts.
“Yes. Exactly. A big if. But if it is, then the reason to keep them out isn’t safety anymore. It’s spite.”
“That’s a plenty good reason.” Nora’s face is red. Blazing.
“For some people.”
“Yes! Us!” she says, and then, when he doesn’t say anything, “I can’t believe it,” her voice changed completely, her face too, like she’s become a different person in these few sad seconds.
“What?”
“When he told me he was taking this to you, I was thrilled. Overjoyed. Because I knew—I knew—you’d never pick him over us. Over me. But it turns out—”
“I would never pick him over you,” Omar interrupts. He won’t let her say it, won’t hear it.
“That’s not what’s happening here? That’s not what you’re telling me?”
“Nora. It’s not.”
He stops and she stops, and they look at each other while long moments pass. Whatever’s going on between them these last weeks has broken her rage like a fever, but it’s left her fragile, vulnerable. Without the anger toward him, all she has is fear, fear and unguarded hope and the likelihood of being hurt some more. She drops her head.
“I am not choosing him over you or over Bourne,” he says slowly. “Of course I’m not.” A pause, then, “Among many other reasons, it’s not my choice.”
Her head snaps up. She was expecting him to take her side. Then, when it seemed like it would go the other way, she was expecting to be devastated for failing to expect that of course he was taking Belsum’s side. Again. But she was not expecting this.
“I’m calling a vote,” he says, sorry but sure.
It takes a moment for her brain to catch up. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Omar—”
“I have to.”
“You do not.”
“This isn’t your decision, Nora.”
“No, it’s yours.”
“It’s not.”
“Omar.” She makes herself take a deep breath, lower her voice. “This is our chance. Our one chance. You said you chose wrong last time. This is how you—we—make it right.”
“It wouldn’t make it right, Nora. It can never be made right. But that is the choice I’d make if this were my decision.” He pauses and holds her eyes, making sure she’s heard him before he continues. “But it’s not. We need to decide—”
“Yes! Exactly!”
“Not we, you and me.” He puts his hands over his heart. “We, all of us. Bourne’s citizenry. We need to decide—we all need to decide—if this is a risk we’re willing to take as a town in exchange for what Belsum is offering. If we believe them this time. If we think they’ve earned another chance. If we think they haven’t earned another chance but we’re going to grant them one anyway. I told Nathan I’d give him a couple weeks to make his case around here, put that R&D in layman’s terms for people, and then we’ll hold a vote. If the majority wants to give Belsum another go, we’ll repair the dam. But if the vote goes the other way, we’ll proceed with legal action immediately to force Belsum to desist on the grounds that the infrastructure is unsound.”
“You don’t owe him a vote or anything else.” Her voice breaks and she lets it, allows herself to sound—to be—vulnerable before him, allows herself to ask him for this one thing.
“You’re right, Nora.” But he’s shaking his head no. “We don’t owe Belsum anything. But I owe the people in this town.” He looks like his heart is breaking. “At least it will be fair this time. At least you’ll get your say.”
She nods and meets his eyes as hers fill. “It’ll be a landslide,” she says. “Right? Of course it will. It has to be.”
“I agree.” Does he? Or is he just saying that to comfort her? “I bet it’s ten to one, a hundred to one, kicking them to the curb. We’ll get the best of both worlds: everyone has their say and we get rid of Belsum.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and wills his words to God’s ears.
He puts his hands on the bar, palms up, and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
Everyone is sorry tonight.
Slowly, she goes over and presses her hands on top of his, not holding but palm to palm, and whispers back, “I know,” dazed by this latest twist of shared misfortune, which is, however, an improvement over the usual kind which she has to burden alone.
One
He doesn’t answer his phone or return my texts, but maybe he’s not getting them because his reception’s so bad. I can’t call his landline because anyone might pick up. So the only place to have this conversation is at school. And we cannot have this conversation at school.
Or maybe it’s that I don’t really want to have this conversation.
There might be a perfectly reasonable, totally logical explanation, a really good and fair and legit reason why River betrayed me, betrayed all of us, double agented, pretended to be on our side, and then consorted with the enemy. Maybe he got tricked into telling, or his grandfather came into town and kicked him till he confessed, or they threatened to make him drink tap water or bribed him with something great even I couldn’t expect him to refuse, like that box you put people in to saw them in half. Maybe he was hypnotized.
But I don’t ask him, not because these scenarios aren’t possible, but because they aren’t possible enough. Much more likely explanations include: I kissed you, but I was faking. I said I cared about you, but I didn’t really. I only pretended to be interested in you so you’d spill your family’s secrets so mine could get richer. I can’t believe you fell for it. I’d never be interested in someone as pathetic as you.
So I make sure not to be alone anywhere he is. When the bell rings, I’m already packed, the first one up and out of the room, like he used to be when he was getting beat up. When he tries to catch my eye, I flick mine away from him at the last second. When I see him coming in the hallway, I pretend I forgot something and turn back the other way. When a note makes its way to me hand over hand in history, I refuse to take it.
“I shall extirpate this missive for you.” Petra deposits it in the trash can with a flourish, so we know he sees. He looks miserable. But not as miserable as I must.
And plus there’s the vote, which is all my fault. Or, to be more accurate, as Monday would insist, it’s River’s fault he told his father, and it’s his father’s fault Omar had to call a vote, but it’s my fault for telling River in the first place, and if I hadn’t, there wouldn’t have to be a vote.
Which could go either way. On the one hand, no one in this town but Omar and Nathan ever had an opportunity to say yes or no to Belsum. Omar was lied to, and apparently Nathan can’t say no to his father. Lots of us would very happily say no to Duke Templeton, but Duke Templeton never asked us. So maybe now that the question’s finally being posed, enough of us will answer it the right way. Not all of us—not Mama’s guys at the bar, not all the ex-employees who dropped off the lawsuit when they got the opportunity to be ex-ex-employees instead—but enough. Sure, some of us will choose jobs and another roll of the dice. But most of us—enough of us—will choose anger and comeuppance and what’s fair and what’s right and having learned our lesson the really, really hard way.
I say us, but actually it’s them. We can’t vote. We’re not old enough. So even though we’re the ones whose future’s being voted on, we don’t get a say, and that’s too bad because we’d vote the right way for sure. I remember the Kyles explaining they had to kick River’s ass because someone had to take up the cause when their fathers dropped it to take jobs. I remember Mirabel saying it’s our turn now.
It is, but no one’s asking.
Still, it’
s my fault, and I have to fix it. Pay penance. Make amends. Propitiation, Petra says, for what I’ve done. I make her come with me, and we start campaigning.
* * *
When Pooh answers the door, we plunge right in with “You have to vote against Belsum.”
“Obviously.” She rolls her eyes. “But your pitch needs work.”
“They’re flagitious.” Petra’s counting off on her fingers. “They’re pernicious. Their specious claim that they’re innoxious now is a spurious one.”
“I know what you mean,” Pooh says, “and I have no idea what you mean.”
“How would you put it?” I ask. “Tell us from the heart. Why are you voting no?”
“My dotage, decline, and eventual demise will be much less depressing if I’m leaving a world without Belsum in it.”
I wrinkle my nose. “It’s a little wordy.”
She rainbows her hand across the air in front of her, imagining a billboard or maybe bumper stickers. “‘Belsum. Don’t die before they do.’”
“Pithier,” I grant her, “but you’re not dying.”
“Well not yet,” she says. “How’s your love life?”
“Miasmatic,” I admit.
Pooh makes a sympathetic face and promises to vote against Belsum. Petra makes a sympathetic face undercut with relief that even in the depths of my despair I’m still studying for the SATs.
* * *
We find Pastor Jeff at the clinic instead of the church, so we take a medical approach.
“You have to vote against,” Petra says, “because of your obligations as a doctor. First do no harm?”
“Bourne’s not a sick patient,” he says. “And many of its citizens who are wouldn’t be—or wouldn’t be as often—if they had health insurance and more providers.”
So we switch tactics.
“What about your pastoralism?” I ask.
“That’s not what that means,” Petra warns.
Pastor Jeff smiles. “My divine duties overwhelm my civic obligations.”
Petra looks confused.
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