by Chant, Zoe
"Are you telling me I don't own my house?" Sarah asked in astonishment.
The judge shrugged. "You do, for all intents and purposes. It's on a generational lease. But if you read the fine print, no, you don't. You're leasing it for 999 years. I suppose it's more like 750 now, though, in case you want to worry about that."
Sarah stared at her so hard that Matthew laughed. "And the whole town is like that?" he asked.
"It is. It's one of those things nobody thinks about anymore, though. Houses and land do sell, of course, but you can be certain that a corporation would strike out the leasehold aspects. It's a good thing Mary Anne Brannigan didn't sell her land last year. That would have gutted our whole argument."
"Could she even have sold it?" Sarah asked. "Would the lease allow for it?"
"Almost nobody in Virtue remembers the outlying farms and lands are leased instead of owned by the families that live on them. Mabs could have sold and it would have made a legal precedent if the town hadn't objected at the time."
"Gaah! Why doesn't anybody know that?"
"I didn't even know it," Robin said interestedly, leaning her nose closer to the document to read it. "How come you didn't mention it, Mom?"
"I suppose because you're not in a position to be buying a house here any time soon," Judge Owens said dryly.
"Oh, sure, bring logic into it." Robin gave a sniff of pretend offense and looked pleased when the adults chuckled.
"So will this help?" Matthew asked. "Is it what you're looking for?"
"It is." Judge Owens smiled. "Their eminent domain argument rests on the state's willingness to provide it, but this supersedes statehood. Having the original document is really valuable in this argument. Thank you both."
"Of course!" Sarah replied stoutly. "You know I'll do anything I can to help Virtue."
"I do know." The judge gave Sarah a hug, and offered Matthew another smile. "You can leave it with me now. The next part is my job."
"Let us know if there's anything else we can do?" Matthew asked, and the judge nodded. They shook hands, and Matt held the door for Sarah on their way out, although she stopped on the porch and looked back.
"For a really theatrical dramatic reveal it would turn out Judge Owens was the person working against Virtue and we'd just handed her all the evidence she needed to destroy the town."
Matthew laughed. "That would be theatrical. Do you think she is?"
"No. She'd have to be an amazing liar to pull that off. Of course, Judge Owens is good at everything."
"Look who's talking! But probably she's just telling the truth." Matt pulled Sarah into a hug before they got into the truck, and murmured, "Don't make problems for yourself where they don't exist. You've got enough going on already."
"Including a dress fitting tomorrow," Sarah said with a groan. "And a bachelorette party this weekend!"
"Do I get to come?"
"Girls only, sorry!"
Matthew grinned, but a pang went through his heart. He'd spent every evening in Virtue so far, and some of the nights, with Sarah Ekstrom. The idea of giving her up even for a night, when they had so little time left together, hurt more than he expected it to.
Not that he begrudged her an evening with her friends. That wasn't it at all. He just didn't know what he would do with himself, alone in a town he didn't know. The fact that his whole life, up until now, had been made up of evenings like that was something he had to think about. It hadn't bothered him, before. But now...
...now what he wanted was to be with Sarah, and to belong where Sarah belonged, as much as he possibly could. However much that was, and however they could do it, that was what he wanted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sarah spent the next few days at work on tenterhooks, waiting to hear what had happened with the injunction. Judge Owens came by a couple of times to tell her nothing had changed yet, which—logically—Sarah understood.
Emotionally, though, she was ready for the big win. "It's not fair," she told Matt semi-sullenly during lunch. "In the movies it's all wrapped up by the next afternoon."
"In the movies you can go from the Bronx to the Empire State Building by going around corner," Matt pointed out, and she laughed.
She had laughed more in the week with Matthew than she could remember in her whole life, and she was a pretty cheerful person to begin with. They'd stolen moments out of their days together, Sarah coming back to the archives room to work with him for a bit while another librarian held down the fort, or both of them slipping out for a quick walk on a glorious morning. She'd almost regretted having to go make sure her bridesmaid's gown fit, although the afternoon with the girls—and Noah, who was getting adjustments made to his tiny ring-bearer tuxedo—had been great fun.
Mabs had cornered her as Sarah was changing back into her street clothes, dropping her voice to say, "So things are going well with Matthew, huh?"
Sarah put a hand over her face, half hiding from the truth of just how well things were going. "I know everybody says this kind of thing when they get together with somebody, but he's so amazing, Mabs. He keeps helping!" she cried, feeling ridiculous. "It's never 'you already have too much to do, Sarah, don't add another thing,' with him. It's always, 'I'd love to help you prepare the meals for the Meals-on-Wheels truck.'"
To her surprise, Mabs's eyes welled up with tears and she pulled Sarah into a hug. "I know how you feel," she said in a small, tight voice. "I'd always been scrambling just to keep things from falling apart and then Jake came along and made me feel like I could honestly do anything I wanted to. You've been doing everything all at once forever, really well. Having somebody there to help and support you is the least you deserve. I'm so glad, Sarah."
Sarah, forlornly, said, "But he's leaving. I know we don't have to figure it all out right away, but it seems like so much," and Mabs hugged her even tighter.
"You'll find a way to make it work. I have faith."
"I do too, actually. It's just a lot." Sarah sniffled, then swiftly wiped her eyes as Noah burst into the dressing room with a handful of rainbow lollipops.
"Mom! Mommy, look what they gave me! They said there's one for everybody and three for me! Oh, no! Are you crying, Auntie Sarah? Do you need a hug?" He threw himself into her arms for a brief hug, then, clearly thinking of a better idea, pulled back and said, with the solemn urgency only a five year old could achieve, "Do you need a lollipop?"
Sarah giggled, if a little wetly. "A lollipop would be great. Thank you, Noah."
"Here," he said with true generosity, "you can have two." Then his face fell as he realized something and reluctantly, if good-heartedly, turned to his mother. "Would you like two, too, Mommy?"
Mabs laughed and bent to pick him up into a hug. "No, that's okay, but thank you very much for offering. That was good sharing."
Sheer relief swept the little boy's face, though he tried to maintain the noble course by adding, "You can still have two later, if you change your mind."
"You're a good kid, Noah," Sarah whispered, and kissed his hair. "Thank you. Tell you what, I think one lollipop is enough for me, too, but would you mind if I gave my second one to Matthew?"
"I guess that'd be okay." Noah's expression went conniving, but before he could put whatever nefarious plan had come to mind into action, Mabs shook her head and put him down.
"No, Noah, you may not go ask them for more lollipops."
Vast outraged astonishment dropped Noah's jaw. "How did you know I was going to?"
"Mommies know everything."
"They do not." Noah's shoulders hunched and he glowered at the floor, muttering, "They just know most things."
"That's true." Mabs kissed his head. "Now go give Jenny and Robin their lollipops."
"Okay!" Noah ran off, and Sarah shook her head, smiling.
"I don't know how you do it."
"Me either, most of the time," Mabs confessed. "Having Jake around helps a lot."
A shriek came from the other room and the
y both rushed out of the dressing room to see if Noah had somehow murdered himself or someone else in the twenty seconds since he'd left them.
Instead they found Robin and Jenny hugging and dancing around in circles while Noah leaped around them yelling gleefully. Jenny released Robin and threw herself at Sarah with the same abandon Noah usually showed. "You did it you did it you did it!"
"Yay! I did what?" Sarah caught Jenny, not quite as easily as she caught Noah when he did that, and staggered around in the hug. "What happened?"
"The state agreed that Virtue has maintained its authority over its boundaries since the charter was signed, which means Upstate Resorts can't move in! We did it! You did it! You found the charter!"
Sarah squealed, shrieked, and squealed again. "We did it! We did it! Do we get to have a party now?"
Jenny yelled, "Party at my place!" and ran out laughing and shouting to call someone from the dress shop's porch so she wasn't yelling inside, although the women who worked there were local themselves, and obviously just as delighted as Jenny was.
Noah bounced around Sarah, his eyes huge with hope and uncertainty. "Did we win, Auntie Sarah? Did we win? Does Miss Jenny get to keep her ranch?"
"We won!" Sarah picked him up and spun him around. "So you'll get to have those horse-riding lessons after all!'
Noah gasped from the bottom of his soul. "I will?"
His mother, in a completely different tone, said, "He will?"
Sarah gave Mabs a sheepish, toothy grin, and she relented with a laugh. "We'll talk about it."
Noah walked out of the shop in an absolute daze, for once quiet with amazement. Sarah winced apologetically at Mabs. "Sorry?"
"It's okay, it was kind of inevitable anyway, wasn't it." Mabs hugged Sarah, then grinned hugely. "Come on, let's go throw a party. Call Matt!"
"You call Jake!"
They both did as they headed out of the shop, and a couple of minutes later, Matthew drove up in Sarah's red truck, and rolled down the window, leaning out to grin broadly at Sarah. "I hear we've got a party to go to?"
For a minute, the only party she wanted to go to was a private one with Matthew himself. He looked so gorgeous in the bright afternoon sun, its color burnishing his skin to gold and finding places in his black curls to brighten them toward blue. His smile was sweet and hopeful and happy, and he had his shirt sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms, which honestly just wasn't fair. The shirt fit him loosely, looking all comfy and lightweight in the summer heat, and Sarah thought she couldn't love him more if she tried.
And that was a really big thought, one she could hardly even figure out how to think about, so maybe going out to Jenny's ranch for a "we kicked the bad guys out" party was a good idea after all.
Noah howled, "Can I ride with yoooooouuuuu?" hopefully, but Sarah shook her head no.
"'Fraid not, sweetie, I don't have the safety seat with me. Next time, okay?"
"Oookaaaaaaay." Apparently Noah hadn't expected to get his way, because he bounced off with his mother without further complaint.
"You're really good with him," Matthew said with admiration, as Sarah got in the truck.
She laughed. "It's easy to be good with kids when you can hand them back to their parents when they begin screaming."
"Not a fan, then?"
"No, I like them, I'd even like to have a couple someday, but I'm not lying to myself about the reality of parenting, either. Being Auntie Sarah is a lot easier than being Mommy."
"True enough. By the way, I kind of..." Matthew threw her a guilty look. "I may not have been working on the archives this morning."
"No?" Sarah's eyebrows rose. "What, pray tell, were you working on that I'm paying you to not work on?"
"In my defense, it's a state grant that's paying me to not work on the archives."
A laugh burst out of Sarah. "That's true. Okay, what were you working on, regardless of who's paying for it?"
"I may have called a friend who's a forensic archivist—"
"Is that even a thing?" Sarah asked, astonished. "Obviously it is, but who knew? Anyway, go on, sorry for interrupting."
"No, that's okay, I kind of did the same thing when I first heard about it. You know how you said you didn't have the expertise to follow the chain of ownership on the Upstate Resorts? Well, he does. He sent me a ton of stuff about their history and investors. I'm nowhere near done with it, but maybe it'll tell us something about who might be trying to undermine Virtue's..." Matthew trailed off a moment, clearly looking for the right words. "I don't want to say 'preservation status,' but at the same time..."
"That's kind of what it is, isn't it? Virtue was meant to be a safe place for shifters to live. A shelter, even if most people don't know that's its purpose. Odds are it's just a beautiful, mostly unspoiled location," Sarah said thoughtfully as they drove down the river road. "Probably nothing nefarious is going on in the background. But if it's more than that...well, I guess we'll find out, won't we. All that paperwork has to turn something up!"
"It might just turn up as a waste of my time," Matthew said apologetically. "If so I'll come back up to Virtue on the weekends and work on the archives for a while, to make up for it."
Sarah's heart flip-flopped. "Really?"
He glanced at her, his brown eyes large and serious behind the dark frames of his glasses. "I'd like to anyway," he said quietly. "I've been thinking about that a lot. Not commuting, but weekends here in Virtue with you. If you'd like to try something long distance."
A rush of emotion made Sarah feel suddenly shaky. "I would. I'd like that. I like you. A lot. You have to know that. I mean, fated mate and all that, yeah, but I just really, really like you, and I meant what I said about being okay with us taking time to figure it out, but if you'd be willing to do that—I could come down to the city sometimes, too. I don't want to live there, but if we were going to try something long distance, I'm definitely in. I'll do my part, too. "
Matthew's smile absolutely bloomed. "We'll make it work. Somehow, Sarah. I can't imagine letting this go."
Joy crashed through Sarah and she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, feeling silly for crying. "Okay." Her voice was hoarse. "Okay. Then we'll figure it out. We'll make it work, and I might not even make you catch up on the archives when you come up here." The last words turned into an almost-sobbing laugh, and Matthew pulled over so he could drag her into his arms.
He mumbled, "Thank goodness," into her hair. "I'd definitely work on them if that's what you wanted me to do, but I can think of other things I'd rather do with most of my time." He held her a long moment, his arms strong and warm and certain, before chuckling softly. "I suppose someone would notice if we were late to the party?"
Sarah giggled. "Noah would notice, and he'd yell about it, and then all the adults who were pretending not to notice would have to notice, and it would be very small-town-gossipy."
"There's something to be said for small town gossip, but maybe not right now." Matthew kissed her again, then reluctantly let her go so they could finish the drive out to Jenny Minor's ranch with smiles on their faces.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Matthew had thought a lot of people had shown up on short notice to blockade the developers couple of weeks ago. There were more people there now, already standing around with beers and bottles of champagne, chatting and talking and clapping each other on the back. Noah Brannigan ran through it all at the head of a pack of children, none of whom seemed to have any fear as they leaped over ditches, climbed trees, and generally created a lot of mayhem.
Into the midst of it all, the head developer, Patrick Harsnick, pulled up in an expensive car and got out with a thunderous expression of outrage. He looked out of place in the gathering, his expensive shoes and well-cut suit marking him as an outsider at the heart of a group dressed to enjoy the summer heat. He pushed through the crowd and all but wagged a finger in Jennifer Minor's face. "This isn't over!"
Jenny, surrounded by friends and m
embers of the community, smiled. "Maybe it's not over for good, but it's sure over for now. You and your developments aren't welcome on my land or in Virtue, Mr. Harsnick. Why don't you take yourself somewhere else and try again?"
"There are people here who want Virtue developed!"
Sarah's hand snaked into Matthew's as Harsnick said that, and she squeezed, glancing quickly at him. He nodded, understanding what she had: that maybe they were right in suspecting an old Virtue family of being somehow involved.
Jenny, in the meantime, shrugged. "Maybe there are, but they're not standing around here right now. I think it's time for you to leave, Mr. Harsnick."
Harsnick looked like he didn't have any intention of doing so, but Sarah pulled Matthew closer, joining the semi-circle of people around Jenny. As if their arrival—or their movement—triggered everyone else, the group took a collective step forward, visibly supporting Jenny and also closing in on Harsnick. After another couple of steps, Harsnick backed up like he didn't realize he was doing it. Within a few steps, he was nearly back at his car, and his whole face contorted with impotent anger. Then he wheeled and stalked to the vehicle, as if he'd meant to be leaving all along. The people of Virtue crowded behind him as if to make sure they were running him off properly. A moment later he was in his car and driving away.
A series of cheers went up, people hugging and shaking hands and congratulating each other. Food arrived, some of it ordered from local restaurants and some of it brought by people who liked to cook, and an air of celebration settled over the ranch. "This is why I love Virtue," Sarah said happily as the evening wore on. "Everybody here really does come together for each other."
Then she glanced at Matthew as if she'd heard the thought he didn't speak aloud, and amended, "Almost everybody?" She bit her lower lip. "Should we go back to the library and see what we can find in those archives your friend sent?"
Matthew smiled. "They'll still be there tomorrow, and the party will only last for tonight."
"True, but if there's someone in Virtue who's backing these people, we'd be better off prepared." Sarah went to say some goodbyes, collecting hugs and handshakes as she went, and Matthew even got a few claps on the back that he wasn't sure he deserved. Still, it did make him feel welcome, as so much in Virtue had.
