His Town

by Ellie Danes

  I just stared at my father for a few moments, heartbroken. I stood.

  “I won’t be coming in today,” I told him. “Not officially.”

  “I’ll call you tonight,” Dad said, just as stiffly as I’d spoken.

  I blinked back tears as I turned to the door. I wanted to reason with him, but I knew that in this moment, at least, there was no way to get through to the old man. He wouldn’t listen to me. He was looking at this as “us versus them” and I’d just joined the “them” side.

  I walked out of his office and resisted the temptation to find Jacob and punch him in the throat, instead walking quickly through the rest of the cubicles and offices for the company I’d worked for more or less since I’d graduated college, and into the elevator. I had no idea what I would do next, but I knew that I would have to do something. I needed to tell Rhett about what had happened. We would need to figure out how to make things happen faster—because my father would be mounting a counter-attack right away.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rhett

  I wasn’t all that surprised to see Martin Lewis swaggering a bit around the Mustang Ridge town center when I came into the area to make my rounds yet again. Emily had told me that her father would probably take a more active role in things, since Jacob had told him about my campaign for a town meeting—and that Jacob had outed her involvement in it. I hoped that the older guy would be better able to manage his behavior than Jacob had been, and decided, as I went to the post office to collect some more signatures, that I would ignore him as long as I possibly could. I didn’t want to get into any kind of confrontation with him if I could avoid it—for Emily’s sake, if nothing else.

  There was also the fact that I knew that there was only so much goodwill that I could keep within the town. While most of the people in Mustang Ridge had some basic respect for me, just for who I was—and the fact that I’d managed to “make good” so to speak, going off and becoming a professional ball player—if I made too much of a spectacle of myself, or made it seem like I was puffing myself up in the whole situation, people would think I was doing this for my own ego, instead of for what was right for the town.

  I’d already talked to a couple of people who voiced that thought, as I made the rounds in the broader, more spaced-out farming areas around the town. More than one person had told me that I was taking the respect the community had for me for granted, and that it wasn’t my place to tell them whether they should or shouldn’t sell to Martin Lewis or his company. “I’m not telling anyone what to do,” I’d told those people. “All I’m doing is gathering up signatures to force a town meeting. I hope you can see that whether or not you go along with the plan or go against it, something this big is worth having an open, public discussion.”

  Some of them had come around, but I was still struggling to get everyone I needed to commit to the petition, and to put their names down as wanting a town meeting. If I had wanted to have a town meeting about whether or not to put a statue in the town center—of the founders of the town, anything at all—people who were both for and against it would have been seeking me out to put their names on a petition to at least talk about it. But this situation, where it was going to have a lot more of an impact, not many people seemed to want to seem like they were coming down on one side or the other.

  I talked to a couple of people at the post office, including the postmaster for the town, Lee Albright. “I think we’re due for a town meeting just on general principles,” he told me, scrawling his signature on my page. “So I’m glad you’re agitating for it.”

  I managed to avoid having to talk to anyone directly in front of Martin for most of an hour, glancing casually and making sure to stay a good distance from him as he chatted with other people about selling their property to him, and what a good thing it would be to bring new business—and new people—into the town. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before, but I had to work hard not to roll my eyes at his pie-in-the-sky salesmanship. Most of the people he talked to seemed to be pretty ambivalent about it, but I could tell from a few of the expressions on people’s faces that they were considering his pitch if only because he was offering so much money.

  “Rhett—I see ya over there,” Martin said, as I came out of the grocery store. “I wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

  That wasn’t great, but I was determined to be civil. I would be polite to him for Emily’s sake, especially after the blow-up that had happened between me and Jacob a few days before.

  “Nice to see you around town, Martin,” I said, taking the risk of using his first name—after all, he’d told me to use that name the last time we’d been around each other. It was only fair, right?

  “I see you’re getting signatures on your petition,” Martin said, nodding at my clipboard.

  “Yeah, I think it’ll be a productive meeting, if I can get enough people to agree to the need for it,” I said, keeping my voice neutral as possible.

  “I heard you and my daughter are working together, or at least you were,” he said.

  “We’ve talked some about the situation at hand, and I think she has some idea that there’s a compromise option,” I told him.

  “I’ve also heard that you’ve gotten involved with her a little beyond just talking,” he countered.

  “I think the extent to which Emily and I have something between us, is between us,” I said, keeping my voice firm but polite.

  It probably would have come to nothing—nothing at all, just a friendly chat between men—if Emily hadn’t come around the corner just then. I hadn’t been expecting her, but of course I knew she had been planning on helping me out in town at some point, doing her fair share of talking to people and gathering signatures for my petition.

  “Dad?” She hurried toward us.

  “I was just having a chat with your friend Rhett here,” Martin said, looking at his daughter sharply to emphasize the word ‘friend.’

  “Dad, if you have a problem with me, you should address it with me,” Emily said.

  “We weren’t having an argument or anything,” I said. “Just talking.”

  “I was about to ask him how he felt about turning a daughter against her father, but maybe you’d better hear the answer, too,” Martin said.

  “He didn’t turn me against you,” Emily said, her cheeks turning pink. “I disagree with the bigger plans that you and Jacob cooked up between you without any concern for the town itself.”

  “And since when did you start caring about a town?” Martin looked from Emily to me. “Because I don’t recall that ever being a concern for you before.”

  “Emily should be allowed to have an opinion of her own,” I said, as mildly as I could—I could tell this was more between her and her father than it had anything to do with me, at least at this point.

  “She can have her own opinion as long as it doesn’t mean she goes around sabotaging my business,” Martin said, turning his gaze back onto his daughter.

  “I’m not sabotaging you,” Emily said, and I could see the look coming over, the same look she’d had on her face when she’d confronted Jacob and me. “I’m telling you that we need to discuss this—the town needs to discuss this. There’s a way to compromise, and you don’t even want to hear it!”

  “If you’re not going to be loyal to me as an employee, you should at least be loyal to me as a daughter,” Martin said, raising his voice.

  “Do you really think it’s a good idea to cause a scene here in the middle of town, where dozens of people will see us? Hear us?” Emily crossed her arms over her chest. “Can’t you at least see how this would be shooting yourself in the foot right now?”

  “I had no intention of causing a scene,” Martin said. It was obvious that the two of them had more or less forgotten about me.

  “I’m just going to head out now,” I said, stepping back from the argument they were having.

  Emily looked at me fleetingly, but I knew she wouldn’t want to leave things unresolve
d with her father, no matter what she’d said about creating a scene. I decided that it was just as well for me to head home—I had things that needed tending to, and I wasn’t going to get any more signatures from people hanging around the town center, at least not for a while. I’d check in with Mom, and get a couple of things done, and then maybe look into talking to a few of the farmers that lived nearer to me.

  Emily and her father were still facing off as I went back to my truck. I got home pretty quickly, still thinking about Emily, worried a bit about her argument with Martin. It wasn’t my business, but I knew it was exactly the thing she’d been dreading when she agreed to work with me. It wasn’t fair that Martin was being an ass about his daughter’s change of heart. At the same time, I could see where he might feel a bit betrayed. It was a terrible situation all around.

  “You look like you just rode five miles in a downpour,” Mom commented as I came into the house.

  “I feel like it,” I admitted, sitting down at the table as she bustled about in the kitchen, finishing up lunch.

  “What happened? Someone tear up your petition or something?”

  “Nah, I ran into Martin Lewis in town,” I explained. “And then when I thought we might be able to finish our conversation without things getting physical, Emily showed up.”

  “Uh-oh,” Mom said. “And then?”

  “The two of them started going at it,” I replied. “Apparently Martin’s found out that there’s something between Emily and me, and he doesn’t like it. Thinks his daughter’s turned on him, sabotaging his big project.”

  My mother shrugged. “Well you know that you’re doing this for the right reasons, right?”

  I nodded. “I’m assuming you mean the petition.”

  “The petition, and whatever it is between you and Emily,” she said with a soft smile. “You didn’t sleep with her to get her on your side, right?”

  I felt my cheeks burning at the fact that Mom had brought it up so plainly. “She and I hooked up before I knew she was working for her father,” I said. “So, no.”

  “Then you know you’re in the right on this,” she said. “The question is whether both she and the town are worth fighting for—to you. Are they both?” I pressed my lips together.

  “The town, absolutely,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “Emily...that depends on how things might go between us.”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “You know, my boy, sometimes being cautious is a bad idea,” she said. “You might have something with her that lasts, and you might have something that evaporates by the time this whole town situation is over. Maybe she’ll get fired by her father and have to stick around in Houston to get another job. Maybe she’ll go back to her normal life after this is all through. Maybe not, though. What you have to decide is what’s worth fighting for. And I’ll give you a hint, if you’re having trouble making up your mind: anything worth having is worth defending your claim to.”

  I thought about that while I ate lunch, and Mom changed the subject to the weather, the prospects we had in the field, things like that. I started cleaning up, getting ready to head out to some of the local farms, to maybe see if I could get a handful—maybe ten—more signatures on my petition.

  Mom was getting things ready to start making dinner—she’d decided to make a big pot of stew, since the night was supposed to be on the cool side for once.

  There was a knock at the door, so I went to answer it. Of all the people I expected to see on the other side of the door, Emily hadn’t even made the list, but I was happy to see her, nonetheless.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” I kissed her on the cheek and then on the lips.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said to me.

  “I’ve seen worse fights,” I told her. “I’m just sorry you had to go through it.”

  “We both needed to blow off some steam,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s going to be possible to change my dad’s mind.”

  “So, are you going to quit? Before he fires you? What’s the next step for you?”

  She pressed her lips together and I could tell she was still deciding something—still working through something in her head.

  “I’m not going to quit, and I’m not going to argue with him anymore,” she said. “If he feels the need to fire me, he’ll have to fire me.”

  “At least then you’ll get unemployment,” I pointed out with a grin.

  Emily smiled back, but she looked unconvinced.

  “I know you’re busy here, getting signatures, but I feel like...I think that I still have to look at stuff in the office, see if there’s not some option on that end for slowing things down,” Emily said. “But I don’t...I don’t want to be by myself. Will you come to Houston with me?”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “Why would you need me in Houston?”

  Emily looked away. “I just don’t want to be by myself,” she said. “I feel...I feel like my dad might drop me the way he did my mom, you know?”

  “You can stay here,” I suggested.

  “Rhett, you should go with her,” Mom said quietly from the pass-through to the kitchen.

  “Mom? Can you stay out of this?”

  Mom looked at me steadily for a moment. “I just thought I might remind you of what we were talking about earlier. About what’s worth having.”

  She turned away and I looked at Emily. Emily was definitely worth having; she was worth caring about, especially since she’d already faced down the prospect of her worst fear—and she was still doing it, for the sake of helping me. She could have decided not to get involved at all—not to help her father, but not to go against him, either. She didn’t have to choose to help me. But she had.

  I leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Sure, I’ll come with you to Houston—I’ll stay the night. Give me a minute or two to get a change of clothes, and we can head out.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Emily

  I woke up after a lengthy nap in Rhett’s arms, feeling a tingle of something along my nerves. I had realized something while I’d been asleep, long after we’d gotten into bed together. I’d woken up because something in my dream told me that I knew what I needed to do, how I could work toward fixing the problem with Dad and maybe figure out how to mend fences with him. I couldn’t even think specifically about what it was, but I knew I needed to go to the office and look at Jacob’s stuff. He was the one who’d come up with the deal, so he’d have the details that would help me to get things in the direction they should be going in.

  I shifted in my bed and glanced at Rhett. He was fast asleep next to me, one arm draped over my belly. I thought about waiting until morning—early morning—and letting him in on what I’d figured out, or maybe waking him up and telling him. A look at the clock in my room told me that it was nine at night. We’d gotten lunch on the way in and ordered Chinese delivery to the apartment, and we’d fallen asleep together after I’d taken the liberty of showing him the shower—and after we’d had our own little romp there together.

  But I didn’t know if my hunch would bear any fruit at all, and I didn’t want Rhett to be there if nothing came about. I waited until he shifted, and then I carefully slid out from underneath his arm. I slithered out of the bed and padded across my bedroom. In the gloomy light that came in from the bathroom, I could see Rhett on my bed. He didn’t stir as I grabbed something to wear from the dresser and pulled it on. It was well after hours at the office; there wouldn’t be anyone there in the building except for maybe one or two of the janitorial staff, and the night guards. I didn’t need to dress up or look more than just regularly decent.

  I went into the living room and found the shoes I’d taken off at the door, along with my purse. I took my phone off of the charger and shoved it in my bag, and grabbed my keys as quietly as I could—.

  At my apartment door, I took a deep breath. Was I doing something crazy? It can’t be that crazy. You’re not breaking in—you have the security code and you have th
e keys. You have a hunch, and it might get you something worth working on. If I checked out Jacob’s office and there wasn’t anything to find, I would just come back and figure out some other way to help Rhett. But if there was something there, and I didn’t at least check, wouldn’t I regret it later on?

  I slipped out of the apartment and headed to my car, still feeling that jittery, nervous feeling. I didn’t even know what I was going to find, or if there was anything to find, but I knew that if my dad found out what I was doing, I wouldn’t need to worry anymore about whether or not he was going to fire me. He would absolutely fire me. I shook the thought out of my head, and focused on the drive. While traffic never fully dies in Houston, at nine-thirty at night it’s pretty light, and I got to the building in about twenty minutes.

  Once inside the office building, I looked around at the dark and poorly-lit lobby. I pulled my sweater from my car a little tighter around me. An idea flitted into my head. Jacob had been the one to make the pitch to the company Dad was trying to move into Mustang Ridge, so there had to be something—even something little—that would give me leverage of some kind. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I could remember Evelyn making an offhand comment about the paperwork that had come in regarding the expansion of the plan, that there were some headaches with the contract changes and the payments.

  I waited for a moment in the main area of the office, looking around me to make sure there wasn’t anyone around. I could hear a vacuum cleaner running at the other end of the floor, and closer to me the click and hum of computers and printers, but nothing to tell me that there was anyone worth worrying about nearby. Exhaling, I continued on through the cubicles and desks. When I found Jacob’s door, I prayed that he’d stuck to his usual habit of not locking up. For a moment I worried—with chagrin—that this would almost certainly be the one time he locked his office; the time I needed to get into his office to check on something.