“I understand.” Lacy took a sip of water before piling Eva’s plate on top of the others and avoided making eye contact.
“All I know is it was a closed adoption.” Which didn’t bode well for getting to the bottom of their story without the help of Eva’s adoptive mother.
Noah let out a squeal and upturned his empty bowl, obviously ready for more food, and in a group effort, everyone at the table jumped to meet one aspect of his needs. Zack refilled his sippy cup with water, Emma offered him one of her broccoli florets while he impatiently waited, Eva wiped up the mess on his high chair tray and Lacy made quick work of dishing out more pulverized cooked chicken.
Happy baby, happy life.
* * *
Joe Aguirre hardly had time to run Little River Valley and maintain his law practice, let alone raise funds and run for reelection against an aggressive opponent who wasn’t above pulling dirty tricks. Like the fast-food shenanigans.
Sitting, Joe shuffled through a stack of papers on his messy desk, hoping to find the schedule his best friend and campaign manager, Mike Machado, had copied and personally handed him earlier in the afternoon. All work and no play had made him disorganized.
He shoved the ergonomically adjusted chair back from his functional, no-frills metal-and-glass desk and put his hands behind his head. All Joe was doing was honoring the town charter, written long before he’d been born, which declared no chain stores were allowed within the city limits. The townspeople had been perfectly happy with their own unique department store and numerous other small businesses, independent restaurants, cafés and diners all these years. Why change now?
Suddenly, with the campaign heating up, his opponent had begun to insist the seniors needed cheap, fast food. Change the Charter had become her slogan. Talk about convenient. He went back to searching for the misplaced schedule. “Where is it,” he grumbled, ready to push everything off his table to find it if necessary.
He was wise enough to know this made-up problem by his opponent was in response to his attempt to balance the town budget. The exercise involved tightening a few bloated belts and cutting down allocations for some local government-funded businesses, one of which was owned by his opponent. His decision to allow the building of a hundred small homes for citizens sixty and over, instead of letting the mega fast-food company have its way with expanding wherever it pleased, had also irritated a handful of local investors. People, he’d come to find out, who’d moved to Little River Valley after making their millions. People who had zero allegiance to his hometown and what it stood for. He’d put his foot down, and fast, and now the backlash was an opponent, probably backed by them, who suddenly couldn’t live without the Golden Arches in her backyard.
Change the Charter over my dead body.
His cell phone rang and he grabbed it, putting it immediately to speaker. “Aguirre.”
“Joe!”
Speak of the devil. It was his best friend, the last person he wanted to talk to tonight. “Que pasa, Miguel?”
“Have you seen the latest poll?”
Could he please stop with the continuous updates on the uphill battle? Yes, Joe had seen that poll, thank you very much, and he didn’t want to be reminded about Louella Barnstable’s tightening of his lead.
“We need some good PR and fast. Got any ideas?”
“Honestly?” Joe tossed his pen on the mounting pile of papers on his desk. “If running on my good record isn’t enough, I don’t have a clue.”
“That’s your problem, you’re too pragmatic. You need to show more personality, flash that handsome smile more often.”
“Not my style and you know it.”
“If Louella keeps gaining on you, you’re going to have to come up with something, so you better start thinking now.”
He dug thumbs in his closed eyes and squinted tight. “Okay, I’ll smile more. Kiss more babies.”
“That’s right. Get seen. Shake hands.”
He knew the drill but dreaded it. Not that he didn’t like or care about people. Why else would he be running for a second term as mayor? But his law practice was suffering from inattention. He hadn’t been able to take on a new client in months, and truth was, since he didn’t intend to be mayor for life, it worried him. That and the fact that man did not live from small-town mayoral salary alone. “I promise to be on Main Street walking the boulevard first thing tomorrow morning.”
“And eat breakfast at Donna Lee’s.”
“Good idea.” The quintessential small-town greasy spoon diner. “I’ll let people know there are plenty of places to get good inexpensive meals in town. Served on plates, not in paper bags. Don’t they have an early bird special? We don’t need fast food. Not in Little River Valley.”
“That’s the spirit. Be sure to let the Little River Valley Voice know you’ll be there, too.”
“Isn’t that your job?”
“Okay, bueno. Meantime, I’ll keep my eye out for any and all PR opportunities.”
Joe rubbed his face with a hand. This was the part he hated about running for public office. He couldn’t be spontaneous. Had to have his campaign manager tip off the newspaper whenever he went out, to make sure he was seen and so the story got covered. Kind of like the debate about sound and the tree falling in the forest. If Joe wasn’t seen out and about in Little River Valley, did he exist?
Yes, he grumbled internally. Because he was always working. For the citizens of Little River Valley. “Great. Sounds good. Buenos noches, Miguel.”
“It’s Mike to you, Jose.”
Ending the call with the friendly reminder that Jose and Miguel had been childhood friends helped Joe smile. First day of elementary school, the six-year-old boys had been thrown together in an English only, total immersion setting. Joe’s parents only knew enough English to get along on the job and spoke solamente Spanish at home. Joe had only picked up a few English phrases from watching TV. Both boys had been thankful they didn’t have to go through the trauma alone and had bonded immediately. Friends for life. They’d both come a long way from the Ventura County barrio; and their parents, who’d spent most of their lives breaking their backs on the local farmlands to help them get out, had a lot to be proud of.
Copyright © 2020 by Janet Maarschalk
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ISBN: 9781488069642
Her Motherhood Wish
Copyright © 2020 by TTQ Books LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Her Motherhood Wish Page 21
