by Maria Geraci
Is this how Bruce Bailey felt last year? Mimi could almost feel sorry for him, except she was pretty sure he’d put Doug up to the check scheme, so, no, she didn’t feel sorry for him at all. She could only feel sorry for herself right now.
She took a swig from her bottle of water and rinsed out her mouth. It was time to woman up. She was going to march out there and get on that loudspeaker and make an announcement. It was the only thing she could do.
Mimi worked her way through the crowd. The concert ticket line was so long it went all the way around the food booths. She had no idea Fatback Bubba was this popular. It had been a brilliant idea to get him. If only she hadn’t screwed up, today would have gone down in history as the most successful Spring Into Summer festival ever. Instead, it would probably go down as one of the worst, only second to last year’s fiasco. At least she hadn’t promised to bring in Billy Brenton.
She glanced around, hoping to see Zeke or one of the other uniformed officers, but all she could see were the familiar faces of everyone she’d grown up with. There were lots of unfamiliar faces, as well. Those were the ones she was most worried about. The people in Whispering Bay might not vote her back in as mayor, but they would eventually forgive her. The out-of-towners who’d driven up especially for the festival? They wouldn’t be as charitable. She cringed, thinking of the reaction her announcement would incite.
She walked up to the stage and plucked a mic off the pedestal, then tapped it a couple of times to make sure it was working. The tapping instantly drew the crowd’s attention.
A trickle of sweat ran down her back and into the waistband of her khaki knee length shorts. Here goes nothing. “May I have your attention, please?”
Everyone who wasn’t looking before, looked now. A crowd gathered as close as possible to the ropes sectioning off the grassy concert area. Mimi squinted, trying to make out individual faces. Momma and Daddy waved to her from the cotton candy booth. Bruce and Doug edged their way to the front in a clear effort to get the best view possible, like leering hecklers at an execution.
She could see Bettina and Viola and the rest of the festival committee trying to keep the ticket booth line in control. Oh God. She should have told them before coming up here. She’d meant to. Now they were going to find out about Fatback Bubba with the rest of the crowd, and as members of the committee, the crowd would undoubtedly blame them as well.
The weight of hundreds of curious eyes stared back at her. Only Pilar and Kitty and Shea and the rest of the Bunco Babes knew what she was about to say. She searched the crowd for them, but there were too many people to make them out. She could feel their presence, though, and that helped some. She wished she had found Zeke. Having him next to her wouldn’t change the outcome, but it would make her feel a lot less vulnerable.
“First off,” she said into the mic, “I want to thank all of you for coming out today. Despite the rain, we had a terrific turnout at the 10K run and I want to congratulate all the winners and everyone who put in such a great effort.” The crowd clapped politely.
“And of course, I want to extend a great big thank you to all the volunteers. Without them, this festival wouldn’t be possible. And especially to the members of the Whispering Bay police force who donated their time today to keep us safe.”
The crowd clapped louder this time. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with tissue paper.
“So…you all know this was my first year as mayor and as head of the festival committee. Now, I’m not one to put the blame on anyone or anything, so everything that’s happened here today, and, um… that will happen, is totally on me. I’m responsible for everything. No one else. Just me. As my husband Zeke likes to say, the buck stops here.”
The crowd stared back at her, waiting.
“And, so, here’s the thing.” She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t look. She just couldn’t. It was like a band aid you had to rip off. Better fast and furious than slow and tortuous. “Fatback Bubba won’t be here tonight,” she blurted.
The crowd went silent.
“What did she say?” someone yelled.
“Yeah, what did you say?” yelled a man wearing a cowboy hat. From this distance, she couldn’t tell for certain, but Mimi thought it was Brooks Farina, the head butcher at the Piggly Wiggly. Just last week he’d hand-cut her some prime rib-eye steaks after he’d gushed over her role in getting Fatback Bubba and the Rattlesnakes for the festival. After tonight she’d probably be lucky if they even let her back in the Piggly Wiggly.
“I…yes, I’m sorry, but I think you all heard me right. Fatback Bubba won’t be here. It’s all my fault. All mine. No one else’s. The rest of the festival committee has no idea what’s going on.”
The noise level jumped from zero to one hundred gazillion (if such a number even existed). Mimi’s heart was beating so fast she was sure the mic would pick it up. Maybe if she had a heart attack, then everyone would feel bad for her and she could get off the stage alive. Of course, she’d have to survive the heart attack for that to happen.
Suddenly, the crowd went quiet again. Footsteps coming from the left of the stage drew her attention. Too freaked out to do much more than stare at the ground, Mimi caught a glimpse of cowboy boots. She looked up a little higher. Worn jeans. She followed the jeans all the way up to a plaid shirt and to a man who looked exactly like…
OH. MY. GOD.
He smiled at her and put his hand out. “You mind?” he said, motioning to the mic.
“You’re…you’re…him!” She sounded like a bleating goat. She had to be hallucinating. Or maybe she did have that heart attack and she was in that place where everyone saw the white light…
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I surely am.”
He had to reach out and gently pluck the mic from her hands. Then he winked at her and Mimi thought she had died and gone to heaven.
“Hel-lo, Whispering Bay!” he said into the mic.
The entire place went wild. He didn’t need an introduction. Not for this crowd. But he gave them one anyway.
“My name is Billy Brenton and I’m mighty happy to be here!”
“I don’t understand,” Bettina grumbled. “I’m on the festival committee, too! Why isn’t everyone coming up to congratulate me?”
“Shut up, Bettina,” Wendy said, causing Sherry and everyone else within hearing distance to give her a second (or in Bettina’s case, a third) glance. Other than the time she’d voted with Mimi, Wendy had never openly gone against Bettina. There must have been a blue moon or a UFO hovering nearby that was causing everything to go out of whack. “I can’t believe it!” she said to Mimi. “Billy Brenton! How on earth did you get him to come here?”
“I have no idea,” Mimi said, still in a daze.
“Don’t be so modest,” Bettina said. “Obviously you knew all along you were getting Billy Brenton. Pretty clever of you to pull this last minute switcheroo. It’s very dramatic.” Bettina looked at her with newfound respect. “It sounds like something I would do, actually.”
“This has got to be the most successful Spring Into Summer festival we’ve ever had!” Viola said. And she was right. As Mimi’s daddy liked to say, the concert tickets had sold faster than a scalded dog.
News that Billy Brenton was performing at the festival spread to the nearby towns and, within an hour, Whispering Bay was dangerously close to busting at the seams. They’d managed to squeeze more than the five hundred they’d anticipated into the roped-off area, but that didn’t stop people from coming. They lined up anywhere they could, just to hear Billy Brenton and his band play.
All this was fantastic, of course. The food and drink trucks were making a fortune, which meant the festival was making a fortune. The weather had turned breezy, making it a perfect night for the concert. Harry Tuba had been disappointed to discover he wouldn’t be needed. A part of Mimi was still miffed that he’d been so uppity earlier. He’d practically made her beg to come play tonight! But Mimi was too happy (and too relieved) to
hold a grudge, so she promised Harry he could play a few songs when Billy was through. Hopefully, someone would stay to listen to him.
The committee agreed to meet one last time after the concert to help coordinate clean-up efforts, then they split up to continue working their respective posts. Mimi walked through the festival grounds, still in a fog of emotions, trying her hardest to find Zeke. Everyone who knew her (and even people who’d never spoken to her before) stopped to congratulate her. Allie and Tom, and Kitty and Pilar and the rest of the Babes had been astonished. They’d crowded around her, shooting questions right and left, wanting to know how Billy Brenton had come to play at the festival. Mimi promised she’d tell them the story later (after she knew herself!).
And then Billy began to sing Weekend Cowboy and it was like he was the Pied Piper, because she automatically began elbowing her way to the front of the standing room only crowd and onto the dance floor. She searched the dozens of faces around her until her gaze zeroed in on a tall man, his dark eyes raking her from head to toe in much the same way he had eighteen years ago. They weren’t kids anymore, but in that moment she was seventeen again. She felt young and flirty and was completely head over heels for the man standing directly in front of her.
“Care to dance?” Zeke asked.
He waited for her to answer, which wasn’t like him. Normally, he’d ask and take her hand at the same time. The fact that he didn’t made her pulse jump in time to the music. It was like he was the same, yet a different Zeke from the one she’d always known.
“I’d love to,” she said.
They’d danced less than thirty seconds before Billy switched up songs to Better Me, his most popular ballad. The crowd collectively ah’d in recognition. Couples spilled from the sidelines, crowding the already-packed dance floor.
Zeke pulled her in close as Mimi wrapped her arms around his neck to sway to the slow, seductive tune that literally thousands of newly married couples across the country had selected for their first dance (Mimi had read that in Brides magazine!). To think, they weren’t listening to a wedding band doing a cover, or to a DJ spinning a CD. They were dancing to Better Me sung by Billy Brenton himself. The whole thing was unbelievable.
Allie and Tom danced past them, Allie’s eyes glittering with happiness. Just a few feet away, Pilar and her husband Nick and Lauren and Nate were dancing as well.
“This is crazy,” Mimi said. “How did this happen?”
“I asked you to dance?” he joked. They’d never danced before with Zeke in full uniform. His gun safely holstered at his side reminded her they weren’t just a regular married couple enjoying a concert; they were Zeke and Mimi, police chief and mayor, and this was their town.
“But how did we end up here? Like this? One day we were just a couple of teenagers with a baby living in a tiny rundown rental off the beach, and now look at us. We have two kids and we’re in charge of this whole crazy town!”
“We worked our asses off?” This time, he wasn’t joking.
“Did you think eighteen years ago we’d make it?” she asked softly.
“Yes.”
Do you think we’ll make another eighteen years? It was on the tip of her tongue, but instead she said, “Zeke, do you have any idea how Billy Brenton and his band got here?”
“Fate?” he asked in a suspiciously innocent voice. Zeke and innocent did not go together. She had no idea how he’d made it happen, but Mimi was one hundred percent certain Billy Brenton was here tonight because of her husband.
“You think fate brought him here?”
“Bruce Bailey did promise Billy Brenton would perform at the Spring Into Summer festival. It just happened a year later, is all.”
Mimi suddenly stopped dancing. “Oh my God. How are we going to pay him? How much does he charge? What on earth am I—”
Zeke smoothly led her back into the slow rhythm of the dance. “Relax. He’s doing this pro-bono.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How on earth did you arrange this?”
“Let’s just say I got a little help from your friends.” He went on to tell her how’d he run into Kitty and Pilar, who had spilled the beans on Fatback Bubba’s no show. He was a little vague on what happened next, but Mimi was able to put enough of it together to know that Zeke had literally saved her bacon.
“You were right, you know,” she said. “Doug isn’t a good guy. I think he and Bruce were hoping I’d mess up.” She told him all about how Doug had purposely misled her into thinking he’d give her city funds to cover the cost of paying Fatback Bubba and his band. And how Doreen was so suspicious of him.
“And this attorney from Old Explorer’s Bay didn’t return your call?”
“Not yet. Maybe I should try again on Monday.”
“You should definitely try again on Monday.”
He gently twirled her around, causing her to laugh. That’s when she noticed the couples around them had moved away to give them room, making them the center of the dance floor.
The song came to an end. Everyone clapped wildly.
Billy put his hand up to silence them. “Thank you again for having us here tonight, folks. Y’all have been a great crowd!” This caused more cheering, of course. Billy had a great sense of theatrical timing. He waited patiently for the crowd to quiet down again. “I know I wasn’t exactly who y’all expected to be here tonight—”
“We love you, Billy!” someone screamed from the audience.
Everyone laughed, including Billy. “Well, heck, I love you, too!”
A man who Mimi recognized as Keith Calloway, Fatback Bubba’s manager, came out onto the stage from the sidelines. He whispered something in Billy’s ear, then made a quick exit.
“I’m afraid my time is up,” Billy said. “I gotta get my beauty sleep so I can play for the good folks of Pensacola tomorrow night, but before I leave I want to give a big shout out to this little lady down here.” He pointed to Mimi. Everyone turned to look at her. “I hear she’s in charge of this shindig. From what I can see, she’d done a mighty fine job, too. I’ll tell you what, they don’t make mayors as pretty as that where I come from.”
There were a few catcalls from the audience. Zeke playfully made a show of raising his hand over his holstered gun. “Hey, that’s my wife you’re whistling at!”
The audience laughed again, then began crying out for an encore. They chanted Billy-Billy over and over until he relented and began to play again. He finished the song and ran off the stage, waving to the audience, who went crazy, stomping their feet and clapping. Mimi felt a little sorry for Harry Tuba. Did he really want to go on after this?
She glanced at her watch. It was nine-thirty. The festival was officially over in thirty minutes. In about an hour this place would be a ghost town. That’s when the hard work of cleaning up and making sure everything got closed down correctly would begin.
Zeke led her off the dance floor, guiding her toward the ticket booth. “We should go check up on Rusty and make sure everything is secured. Then you need to eat.”
Suddenly his entire body went frozen, causing her to collide against his hard back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why’d we stop?”
She followed his cold gaze all the way to an older man, standing just a few feet away. He was tall, almost as tall as Zeke, with dark hair overlaid with a generous helping of gray. His eyes were blue but, other than that, it was liking seeing a glimpse into the future. Mimi instinctively tightened the grasp on her husband’s hand.
“Hello, son.” The man looked nervous. As well he should be.
*~*~*
It had been eighteen years since Zeke last laid eyes on this man. He’d aged, of course, but he’d know Sam Grant anywhere.
“What are you doing here?” Zeke demanded. His voice came out more neutral than he’d expect under the circumstances.
“I didn’t mean for you to see me,” Sam said. His gaze skittered wildly between Zeke and Mimi, like he wasn’t sure what to do.
“I just…I thought since it was festival day, I’d come by and take a look. Walk around the place. This used to be my home, you know. I just wanted…” He shrugged and looked away.
Zeke had waited twenty-four years for this moment. Eighteen years ago, Sam Grant had been so drunk he’d hadn’t even known his own name. But he wasn’t drunk now. His eyes were clearer than the gulf on a hot summer afternoon. He’d remember everything now. Every word Zeke had ever planned to say to him, he’d remember it until it twisted in his gut and made him want to puke. The words were on the tip of Zeke’s tongue. Nasty, vicious stuff that he’d rehearsed over and over in his head, because he knew eventually this day would come. He wanted to say it all. Right now.
But nothing came out.
All that bottled up anger he’d suppressed for years seemed to flow out of his body somehow. It made no sense to him, but in this moment, all he felt was disgust. Sam might not be drunk. Not right now, but he would be again soon. A skunk was a skunk. Eventually, he’d stink things up again. It was just a matter of time.
Mimi squeezed Zeke’s hand. “I’m Mimi,” she said. “Zeke’s wife.”
Sam nodded, like he already knew. He looked grateful that Mimi had acknowledged him.
“You can’t be here right now,” Zeke said.
“I know…I don’t want to cause trouble,” Sam said. “But, I’ve tried to reach out to you every way I know how. Just let me say my peace and I won’t bother you again. I’m an alcoholic, Zeke. You know that better than anyone. And I’ve messed up. Badly. Not just with you and Allie, but with everyone who’s ever been in my life. I’ve been sober now for almost three years.”
“So what do you want? A medal?”
“I want to tell you I’m sorry. That I’m so sorry.”
