Let There Be Light

by Melissa Storm

  “Hmm.” Scarlett couldn’t hide her upset now. “JoAnn, it’s been so nice seeing you, but now you’ve got me nervous.”

  JoAnn transitioned back to her favored nod and waved Scarlett off. “And I’m nervous for you, dear! Go find that Mrs. Caputo and find out what’s going on.”

  Well, nobody had to tell Scarlett twice. She only hoped she’d be able to control her temper enough to get a straight answer.

  Scarlett pushed through the doors into the back offices of the library. Normally, she’d respect the quiet space, but right now she wanted to scream like a banshee—whatever it took to make sure she was heard.

  Why would Mrs. Caputo have told everyone she quit? It just didn’t make any sense.

  The librarian’s door was firmly closed, but Scarlett stormed straight through without knocking. If the old woman had been spreading rumors—or worse—than she didn’t deserve this polite precaution from Scarlett.

  “Scarlett, what are you doing here?” Mrs. Caputo asked from her place behind the desk without a single trace of guilt on her withered face.

  “What are you doing while I’m not here?” Scarlett demanded, noticing now a third person sat in the office with them. She seemed familiar, though Scarlett couldn’t quite place her.

  “Ms. Cole, have a seat,” the woman said as she rose and offered up her own chair.

  Scarlett recoiled from the woman as she reached her hand toward her in greeting. “Who are you, and how do you know me?”

  Mrs. Caputo cleared her throat and stated, “This is Vanessa Price. She’s head of the budgetary committee.”

  Vanessa Price, of course. That’s where Scarlett had seen her overdone, fake mask of a face—all over the sides of buses and newspaper ads. She’d only been elected fairly recently, but was apparently already very concerned with the goings-on at the library.

  Scarlett gave a tight nod toward the politician, then turned back to her former supervisor and demanded an answer to her original inquiry. “Why would JoAnn Marples say that I quit?”

  Mrs. Caputo mumbled something incoherent and shifted her gaze toward Mrs. Price, who wasted no time in providing an answer of her own.

  “Because, my dear, you did.”

  Oh, Scarlett was growing to hate this woman more by the second. Thankfully, she had voted for the other guy. “What? That’s ridiculous! I never—”

  “You never left your job without first obtaining the proper clearance?” Vanessa Price lowered herself to the desk and took a seat on the polished mahogany as if this was just some quaint conversation over morning tea.

  At least Scarlett was taller than the other two women now. That gave her a little more confidence as she shouted, “But she gave me clearance! It was her idea!” She jabbed an angry finger at Mrs. Caputo, who simply frowned and looked to Mrs. Price.

  “Now, now. We both know that she doesn’t have that kind of authority. After all, this is a government-funded entity.”

  “But I didn’t quit! I’m coming back in April. After the—”

  “After the race?” The politician gave a phony chuckle. “More than one full year after you last reported to work? Nobody gets year-long sabbaticals, dear. Not even me.”

  “Okay then,” Scarlett said, finally taking a seat. “I guess I’m coming back now.”

  It was now that Mrs. Caputo found her voice again, only to say, “Actually, you’ve already been fired for failure to report to work. We tried sending a notice, but it seems we didn’t have your correct forwarding address.”

  “This is insane! You could have just called me. My cell number’s the same. And I never would have left, if I didn’t think— if she hadn’t—Ugh!”

  Vanessa Price nodded as she listened and gave Scarlett a pitying look. “I understand that you’re frustrated, but it’s really for the best. We’ve had to scale the budget way back this year. Even poor Mrs. Caputo had to delay her retirement. We couldn’t support the full staff’s salaries anyway.”

  This was going from bad to worse in a hurry. Would Scarlett go to jail if she decked a politician in the face? Would it be worth it, anyway?

  “What budget cuts are you talking about? The library is a pillar of the community. No one would dare steal money from it, especially not some newbie politician who needs to keep her ratings up if she wants to see another term.”

  “Yes, well…” Vanessa’s expression turned cold. “My constituents are quite happy with the new tourism initiative, regardless of what you may think.”

  “Tourism? You are seriously putting tourism over education? Over knowledge?” This was a bad dream. It had to be. Who would come after the library? Who would let them?

  Mrs. Price was quick with an answer. “Not just me, the full board. We’ve had quite the opportunity with this whole Billionaire Bucket List story. It’s like a perfectly packaged gift that fell right into our laps. The whole country has their eyes on Anchorage now. We’d be fools not to grab onto that brass ring while it presented itself.”

  “Billionaire…?” Her words trailed off. She knew exactly who and what was meant.

  “Yes, Henry Mitchell, III. You know him, don’t you? After all, he’s your competitor.”

  “I…”

  Mrs. Caputo rose from her chair and motioned toward the still open door. “You’re about done here, don’t you think, Scarlett?”

  Scarlett looked from her former supervisor to her local congresswoman. Both wore hideous jack-o-lantern smiles.

  “Yes, I think Mrs. Caputo has a point here,” Vanessa said, now also motioning toward the door. “After all, it was you who decided to leave a perfectly stable government job in order to chase dogs around in the snow.”

  Scarlett couldn’t fight back the burning tears that formed in her eyes. She didn’t even care about keeping up appearances anymore. This hurt—deeply. “How could you talk about it like that? You act like you want what’s best for this city, and then you make fun of one of our greatest pastimes?”

  Vanessa smirked and rolled her eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. I’m only teasing.”

  “You’ll never get away with this. Too many people care about the library to see you cut it apart for profit, and if nobody else will fight this, I will,” she vowed.

  “Okay, Scooby Doo. Go drive off in your little Mystery Machine now and stop meddling. The elected officials have already decided what’s best for this city, and it no longer has anything to do with you.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Scarlett said before slamming the door behind her.

  Scarlett stomped out of the library, her brain a frantic whir. It felt as if she was spinning off the chariot all over again, only this time, the pain proved much worse.

  She jammed her keys at the ignition, missed, and had to try again. When she missed a second time, she collapsed onto the steering wheel and allowed herself to cry big, mournful tears.

  Far more than her job had been lost that day.

  She couldn’t live with Lauren and Shane forever, even if they agreed to take her in long-term as she expected they might. Married couples needed their space, and as a grown woman herself, Scarlett needed some semblance of independence. If she couldn’t find library work in Anchorage, she’d either need to leave the state or leave the industry—both of which terrified her.

  And this could be just the first of many libraries under fire. Would budget cuts continue to threaten these beacons of knowledge until the last one crumbled? She hated the thought that the world Ray Bradbury painted in Farenheit 451 might actually become a reality one day. If the government decided books weren’t important, what would they try to dismiss next? And what about all the children who would miss out on a lifelong love affair with reading?

  No, she would stay and fight this. She would be an advocate—not just for herself, but for libraries everywhere. This newfound resolve comforted her enough for now. At least she knew what she was up against. At least she knew she’d been fired.

  She dabbed at her eyes with a long sleeve and fast
ened her seat belt, ready for the long drive back to Puffin Ridge. She’d be alone with her thoughts, and that was when her best ideas came.

  As she reached for the gearshift, her phone buzzed in the cup holder, its sound magnified as the metal and glass vibrated against the plastic.

  A text message.

  From Henry.

  Could he have known about this? Had he met secretly with Vanessa Price as he had done with Scarlett? Did he agree to be the face of her ridiculous tourism campaign? Did he know what he was helping to destroy?

  She put the car back into park and unlocked her phone to see his message.

  Thinking of you. Hope you’re having a good day :)

  Scarlett considered ignoring his message as she drove home, but knew it would eat at her if she did. So she decided to take this opportunity to fish for a bit of information instead. At least then some of her many questions would be answered.

  I met Vanessa Price today, she typed and hit send.

  Yeah? About time she included you in the campaign. Your pretty face will bring in lots of visitors.

  She held her breath, hoping that her instincts were wrong, that Henry would have seen this plan for what it is, that he would have said no. The campaign?

  You know, the Anchorage is Cool travel ads.

  Scarlett groaned at the stupid name as well as the fact that Henry was obviously involved on the ground floor. Oh, yes. And you think they’re a good idea? The ads?

  Absolutely! Tourism is good for the economy. It makes sense they’d want to bring more to the city.

  Scarlett’s tears returned in earnest. Henry was so sure that he wasn’t anything like his grandfather, yet here he was making decisions based on profit rather than heart. But what about the budget cuts that had to be made to support the campaign’s expense?

  Not a big deal. Once more money comes in from the travelers, I’m sure there will be more than enough of the budget to go around.

  And in the mean time?

  She hated what he typed next. Well, you can’t have progress without sacrifice. Wouldn’t you agree?

  The tears fell so fast they blurred the phone as she wrote, No, I don’t agree! I lost my job! The library is in danger of being expensed out of existence! And you know about it!

  Scarlett, let me call you.

  The phone rang in her hand a few short moments later, but she rejected the call. She had her answers and didn’t want to hear anything more until she could come up with a solution.

  He tried calling again. This time, she let it ring out until the switch to voicemail.

  Scarlett, please, Henry typed and called a third time.

  She turned her phone off, cranked up the radio as loud as it would go with the hope that it would drown out her thoughts, and began the drive home to Puffin Ridge.

  Everyone said Henry Mitchell, III was no good, but she’d thought she knew better. She thought she saw something more in him. Turned out he was just another no-good businessman.

  And this whole “I’m really a good guy act?”

  Either he was lying to her… or to himself.

  When Scarlett finally reached the cabin in Puffin Ridge, she crept straight to her room and shut herself inside, incapable of discussing the events of that day with her best friends even though she knew she would need to soon. She wanted to scream into her pillow or pretend it was Vanessa Price and give it a few good punches, but neither of those would help to solve the actual problems she faced.

  The biggest of all these was that she could no longer trust herself. She’d been wrong about Mrs. Caputo’s motives and—even more painfully—about Henry’s heart. How could she have messed up so badly? One moment she thought she was on the verge of maybe, actually, impossibly placing in the Iditarod and finding love all in one go. The next, she found out it was all a lie.

  Henry had probably only flirted with her to work some kind of story angle because, sure enough, footage of them dancing at the Miners and Trappers Ball and then them exchanging a few quick words at the Hozier Track starting line were already being pasted together to tell a tale of love turned hate.

  Local bookworm hooks a hottie!

  From sweet nothings to angry barbs!

  Lovers turned rivals in the dog-sledding world!

  The headlines went on and on. Why did any of them care about her, especially when there was so little to tell? How could such sensational bullcrap flourish when actual books were left to languish at the hands of an under-sized staff?

  What would be next?

  Would they convert the children’s section of her beloved library into a fast food playland? Would they undermine everything else the library did for the community and shut it down in favor of a more budget-conscious online eBook lending system?

  And was it just the politicians who were to blame, or had the larger society changed when she wasn’t paying close enough attention to notice? Did the world really need half a dozen articles about the non-news of Scarlett and Henry? Was this what people chose to read instead of literature?

  The thought made her stomach churn and her heart roil.

  Outside, a car pulled up to the cabin, and she peeked through the window, wishing she’d have had just a little more time to sort out her thoughts before Shane and Lauren arrived back home.

  But the person she saw approaching her window now wasn’t Shane or Lauren. It was Henry.

  And he saw her, too. His mismatched eyes caught hers, and he quickened his pace.

  Scarlett slammed the blinds down, but he came to the window anyway and tapped gently on the glass. “I know you’re there. Please talk to me.”

  Scarlett crossed her arms over her chest and fell back on her bed, unwilling to make a peep.

  His voice came out strained and soft. Had he been crying, too?

  “I didn’t know you lost your job. I didn’t even know you had a job other than handling. I didn’t know the library was on the chopping block, and I didn’t know it was so important to you.”

  At last she could hold her anger back no more. She had to speak up. “It doesn’t matter that it’s important to me,” she thundered. “It’s important, period. How could you not understand that?”

  “Will you come out, or let me in?” he begged. His pleading only made her angrier.

  “I have nothing more to say to you! I should’ve listened to what everyone said about you. I shouldn’t have let you trick me just to get a little extra news coverage.”

  “Is that really what you think of me?” His voice cracked, but she didn’t care.

  He tapped a slow sad tune on the window pane, then whispered through the glass, “I was trying to help do something good. I wanted to help people appreciate this great state and this sport which I’d started to love for myself, not just because of that dumb bucket list. I didn’t know the fine details about the budgeting decisions. I’m just the face of the campaign, Scarlett. I thought I was helping to—”

  She thrust the blinds up, stopping him midsentence. “You’re wasting your breath. I won’t change my mind, and Lauren and Shane won’t be happy to see you here. You need to leave. Now.”

  His eyes glistened with tears. Oh, he could put on a good show, but she refused to be tricked again.

  “But, Scarlett, please,” he whispered. “I’ll do anything. When I get the money from the estate, I’ll fund the library myself. I’ll have them hire you back. I’ll—”

  “No!” she shouted as she slammed the blinds down again and fell onto the bed in a heap of tears. “You think money is the solution to all of life’s problems, but…”

  She cried freely and he waited for her to deliver the final blow to their budding relationship. “Deny it all you want, but you’re just like him, Henry. You’re exactly like your granddad.”

  As enraged as she was, the words stung even her on their way out, but they had to be said. They had to be. She was nobody’s fool, least of all some spoiled rich boy with a blackened heart.

  Her visitor said nothing more
, and a few minutes later, she heard his Mercedes reverse back out of the driveway. This time for good.

  Scarlett trained harder than ever before, throwing herself full force at the sport. After all, it was the only thing she had left now. As expected, Lauren and Shane had offered a full-time position with room and board, but she flatly refused. They didn’t need a full-time handler, and she needed to solve her problems for herself.

  In the months that followed, she worked hard to forge a grueling physical routine, to leave herself no time to dwell on anything but the upcoming race.

  Early each morning, after feeding the “veterans,” she would hook up the puppies and run them in a tight circle with an empty sled behind them as she led the dogs through their paces. In this way, she was able to act as the lead dog and get her blood pumping as well.

  Then after a quick breakfast, she would hook up Lauren’s team and take them for a workout around the property, normally sticking to twenty miles or so. She didn’t like running Lauren’s team as much as her own, but figured she’d need as much practice as possible because she was cramming for the biggest test in her life.

  And she planned to pass with flying colors. She’d already passed the qualifying races and knew she had a place in the main event that year. What happened next would depend on how hard she trained and how well she focused, so she did just that, leaving little time for anything—or anyone—else.

  For lunch, she would stop into the house and give Lauren a report on how her team did for the morning run and quiz Shane on any questions she’d come up with while out on the trail. She’d given up on reading books for her answers after the debacle at the library and when she’d made the mistake of reading a guide from a musher that was very much of the same mindset as Henry’s grandfather.

  Whenever her thoughts turned to Henry, as they still inevitably did whenever she let her guard down, she would busy herself by working to further rehabilitate Fantine and the other rescue dogs. A few had adjusted well already and had already begun to crave running again, so three times a week she would hook them up and take them for short runs, too.