The Lucky One

by Caroline Overington

  ‘Christ, if there is one thing I do not miss about living in a small town, it’s everyone sticking their nose into everyone else’s business,’ said Fletcher.

  I asked Mom: ‘Are you going to read it?’

  ‘No, because I can’t stand it,’ she said, ‘Fletcher, you read it.’

  Fletcher took the iPad and cleared his throat:

  BIG NEWS AT ALDEN CASTLE

  The Monitor hears a whisper that one of our famous landmarks, the much-loved Alden Castle off the Chimney Rock Road, is about to be sold – and probably demolished!!!!

  The gossip – nothing’s confirmed – has shocked many locals because the buyer is rumored to be Pinkhound, a development company with a shocking record of community engagement that has twice been cited for illegal land-clearing.

  Alden Castle is one of the oldest buildings in the area, and as kids we all loved it, didn’t we?

  The estate has been in the hands of the Alden-Stowe family since the late nineteenth century. The current generation of Alden-Stowes have never produced a vintage but locals will remember some pretty wild parties there back in the day.

  The castle and the surrounding estate is owned by a family Trust, and all family members must agree on the sale. The family patriarch, Mr Owen James Alden-Stowe III, has always been opposed but he’s now in his eighties and is believed to have dementia.

  His son, the next natural heir, Owen James (Jack) Alden-Stowe IV, died some years ago in an accident on the property, but his widow, Jesalyn Alden-Stowe, apparently found the buyer – Pinkhound – and she’s up there as we speak, trying to talk the rest of the family round.

  Here at the Monitor, we get it: our sources tell us that Jesalyn lives in straitened financial circumstances in Los Angeles, while her daughter, Eden, is a boarder at Briar Ridge. No wonder she needs to sell!!!! I tried to get a comment but no luck!!

  ‘And that’s it,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘What a ridiculous article,’ said Mom.

  ‘Why is it ridiculous?’ I said. ‘Isn’t it true?’

  * * *

  It wasn’t long after Harry’s first article was published that notices starting going up all over town.

  A PUBLIC MEETING will be held at CITY HALL this WEDNESDAY to discuss the PLANNED SALE of the famous ALDEN-STOWE ESTATE off the CHIMNEY ROCK ROAD. ALL CONCERNED CITIZENS should PLEASE attend.

  ‘I saw one of them on the noticeboard at the gas station,’ said Austin, placing it flat on the kitchen bench. ‘So naturally I took it down.’

  Fletcher stooped to read, then scrunched up the flyer and threw it aside. Fiona fetched it off the floor.

  ‘Who do you think is behind it?’ said Mom.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Fletcher. ‘Somebody who should mind their own business.’

  ‘I asked the guy in the gas station. He said it was Liz Patterson,’ said Austin.

  ‘Liz Patterson? I don’t know any Liz Pattersons,’ said Fiona, hands twisted around her pendant.

  ‘Who even cares?’ Mom said. ‘Whoever it is can stay out of it.’

  ‘You do know her. Liz is the mayor,’ said Tim. ‘She was elected last year. She’s one of the oak-tree preservation people. You remember that protest last year, Fiona, that woman chained to an oak near City Park?’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Mom. ‘That’s all we need.’

  ‘I think I put money in her little collection jar,’ said Fiona. ‘That oak they destroyed was lovely.’

  ‘It was probably dead,’ said Fletcher. ‘They only take down trees that are dead.’

  ‘No, no, it was in the way of something,’ said Fiona. ‘I remember now. It was in the way of something and Liz and her group wanted them to go around it, but there was no way around it. They lost in the end. She’s very passionate.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Mom, sarcastically.

  ‘So now what do we do?’ asked Fletcher. ‘These people arrive and make a big song and dance and how do we combat that? They’re a pain in the butt. She’s probably lived here for five minutes.’

  ‘No, no, she’s a local,’ said Fiona. ‘I remember now. She married into Trent Patterson’s family. She was a Butterfield. And she’s a school teacher. Or she was.’

  ‘She’s a troublemaker,’ said Tim. ‘She can’t help getting herself on the local news, being worried about the water. About the oaks. How developers don’t care.’

  ‘They can’t stop us,’ said Austin, uncertainly. ‘We own this estate. It’s up to us if we sell it.’

  ‘Of course they can’t,’ said Mom, more definitely.

  ‘They probably can’t stop us but they can make life difficult,’ said Fiona. ‘Look at what’s happened over at Seascape. But anyway, it’s silly. People around here know we wouldn’t do the wrong thing. I’ve been part of this community all my life. Dad was on the Pioneer Day committee! They know us.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less about them. But we have to be careful,’ said Fletcher. ‘These people are the outrage police. We can’t afford to get into an argument with them.’

  ‘How are they allowed to even have an opinion?’ said Austin. He had been waiting on toast to pop up and now he was busy buttering. ‘What happens if I go to their houses and sit down on the lawn, saying I don’t want to move?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened in the good old days,’ said Fletcher. ‘A stranger walked onto your property, you had the right to shoot them.’

  ‘Stop being awful,’ said Fiona.

  ‘I’m just saying,’ said Fletcher. ‘Is this going to be the start of some long campaign? I want to get this deal done. For one thing, I’ve got to get back to college. And Sol’s got to get back to her blog. We’ve been running back and forward to Paso so she can upload. She’s running out of places to photograph here.’

  ‘And Eden’s got to get back to Briar Ridge,’ said Mom.

  ‘I’m really worried that Pinkhound won’t want the drama of a long-drawn-out battle,’ said Fiona.

  ‘But do they have a point?’ said Sol. She had until that moment been quiet, picking carefully at the skin of her mandarin. Now she looked up. ‘I mean, if they are concerned about what will happen here … is there anything to worry about?’

  ‘Of course there isn’t,’ said Fletcher, crossly. ‘Christ, don’t you start.’

  * * *

  We – the family – resolved to form a united front and attend the public meeting. It was scheduled for 6pm the following day. Mom came into the kitchen that morning and put the electric kettle on.

  I was seated at the bench, earbuds in, flicking through songs on my playlist. I watched as she carefully unpicked the tab from a peppermint tea bag.

  ‘Can you pull those out?’ she said, gesturing.

  I pulled one side out, and cocked my head, quizzical.

  ‘No, really, Eden, I want you to listen to what I’m saying.’

  I pulled the other earbud out and gave her my full attention. Mom was looking into her cup, like there was something distasteful there. She said: ‘You know, Eden, maybe it would be a good idea for you to see a little less of Earl.’

  I said: ‘Earl? What does Earl have to do with this?’

  Mom put the cup with the still-dry tea bag down on the bench.

  ‘Look, Eden, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘I know he’s your friend and that’s fine, but these deals, they can go either way. Earl isn’t going to want to see this place sold. He lives here rent free! And buyers can always walk away. It could take years to find another one. So all I’m saying is, maybe you could help me by directing all your positive energy into getting this done.’

  I didn’t know what to say. What would Mom know about Earl? It wasn’t about the free rent for him. He loved the estate. He had a vision for what it could be. He was a hard worker. I’d heard him talking about the place the way no one else did. I knew he loved it here. Now I was supposed to sit back while he got turfed out?

  Mom smiled.

  ‘I know you like him,’ she said. ‘You were friends when yo
u were kids. But maybe, as a favour to your mom, you could, you know, not like him so much right now.’

  It was meant to be a joke. I understood that, because Mom was leaning forward, smiling as she tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, but thinking about it literally, how do you just stop liking somebody?

  How does anyone do that?

  * * *

  Fletcher was first to try to wriggle out of attending the public meeting. He’d been all for it, saying: ‘Let’s stare them down!’ but as the day went on, he was more: ‘I’d rather eat cat food.’

  ‘We all have to go,’ Fiona said. ‘We need to show that we’re united. More than that, we need people to see that we’re a good, community-minded family. We don’t mean any harm.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can fake it,’ said Austin, guffawing.

  ‘We’re not faking it. We are good people. And it would be best for all of us to be there,’ said Fiona, ‘to remind everyone we’re local.’

  Fletcher grudgingly agreed. We took two of the estate pickups, parking one behind the other on Main Street. We walked as a group to City Hall, only to find the entrance blocked by a crowd of parents and excited children, gathered on the sidewalk. The smell was of hay and cow shit.

  ‘What the hell?’ said Fletcher.

  It was our neighbour, Don Burnbank. He’d come to town with a longhorn bull in his trailer, in an effort to make his point about Paso being for cattle ranches and vineyards, and not for developers.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Fletcher.

  ‘Please don’t curse,’ whispered Fiona, before reaching out to shake Don’s hand.

  ‘No hard feelings,’ he said, apologetically. ‘But I don’t like the buyers you’ve chosen.’

  The bull was puffing and wheezing in the trailer. Some parents were taking their kids by the hands and leading them up to get a closer look. Sol got out her smartphone and knelt down to take some shots.

  ‘I’ve never seen such a thing before!’ she said.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ said Fletcher gruffly.

  We walked up the steps. I recognised plenty of people from Paso, and it seemed like plenty of people remembered Mom and me and Fiona, so it was all very awkward, with everyone shaking hands, despite being in opposition to what we were doing.

  The local council had set up chairs – red fabric, with brass legs – in one of the meeting rooms. Our family took up the front row. Mom sat with her bare legs crossed at the knee and let her foot swing. Somebody went onto the stage and tapped the microphone, and the buzzing crowd fell silent. The mayor, Liz Patterson, came out from behind a velvet curtain and stood at the wooden lectern, facing the crowd.

  ‘Thank you all so much for coming,’ she said. ‘I did a little head count. More than seventy people! I think that shows exactly how concerned we all are about what goes on in our little township!’

  The audience applauded.

  Mayor Patterson continued, talking about the community’s right to protest against development, even on private property.

  ‘I’m sorry, Fiona,’ she added, looking down, ‘but I love this town, and this district, and I’m dismayed at what’s been happening as people sell up and the developers move in. This isn’t personal and you should know that.’

  Fiona nodded.

  ‘We all saw what happened when the Hardemans sold their ranch,’ Mayor Patterson went on. ‘One hundred majestic oak trees, home to countless birds, came down. Bulldozed into the soil. Well, since then, I have walked the bottoms off my sneakers,’ she flapped her hand like a floppy sole, ‘trying to ensure that kind of thing will never happen again.’

  More applause.

  ‘We could have stopped that vandalism, if only we’d known about it,’ she said. ‘What is Paso without our oaks? We are our oaks!’

  From the corner of my eye I saw Fletcher’s fist tightening on his lap.

  ‘Many of you in the room today will know the Alden-Stowes. They are long-time Roblians. The family patriarch, Owen, served our community for many years. The time has come for them to move on. They want to sell and that’s their right. But who they’re selling to? We’ve all got an interest in that. And that is why we’ll be hearing from Ms Caroline Moyes, an attorney-at-law, who represents the Pinkhound Company, tonight.’

  The crowd murmured its disapproval.

  ‘No, no, we’re all for free speech,’ said Liz, hands up to quieten the grumbles, ‘so let’s hear them out. Caroline, if you’d like to come up?’

  Caroline Moyes got to her feet. She was wearing the same dark skirt suit she’d worn to barrel around the estate with Mom – or at least a similar one. She came up the stairs at the side of the stage to take the mayor’s place at the lectern. There was no applause, but that seemed not to trouble her. She had a speech prepared and delivered it in soothing tones. She included some jokes about being a New Yorker in California – ‘I was so happy to find you had room for one more!’ – and she used all the right words, like conservation and preservation and heritage.

  ‘Pinkhound doesn’t see itself as a developer,’ she said. ‘We see ourselves as neighbours! We are investing in this region for the same reason as all of you. We love it here! Change isn’t always bad. Bigger doesn’t always mean worse. We want to get on with our neighbours. We’re described as big business but essentially, we’re fruit growers! Farmers, same as many of you.’

  The audience listened, and when Caroline was finished there was a smattering of applause, although not from Don Burnbank, who got to his feet, saying: ‘Mind if I have a say?’

  Mayor Patterson nodded and the audience waited for him to make his way up the timber stairs to the lectern. Don Burnbank had a cowboy’s gait. He wore dusty boots and had bowed legs and short grey sideburns, and his hair was all flat around his ears, from wearing his hat.

  ‘I don’t know if you noticed my trailer outside,’ he said, waving his hat towards the door. ‘If you didn’t see it maybe you smelt the longhorn I brought with me?’

  The audience laughed.

  ‘That’s the same trailer I bring to town when we do the cattle drive through the streets of Paso for the Mid State Fair,’ he continued. ‘How many small towns still have a mid state fair? You can’t do it once the cattle are gone. Once the cowboys are gone. My point being, that’s the kind of place we are. We’re ranchers. My ranch has provided a livelihood for my family for three generations,’ he said. ‘I need water in my dams for my cattle. I need my wells. We’ve had a sweet speech from a sweet lady lawyer, but no matter how you dress it up, these people want to do large-scale agricultural work, and believe me when I tell you, I’ll resist any plan to drain my ground water so they can make dams.’

  His delivery was slow. I looked around to see how his speech was going down. The room was transfixed.

  ‘They talk about conservation,’ Don continued, ‘but they can’t make it rain. People have been saying for a year, “The rain’s going to come.” It hasn’t come. I go outside of a night and I pray: “Make it rain.” Nobody’s hearing me. We’ve seen six inches in twelve months. My dam is holding up, but it won’t hold up if these people – out-of-towners, billionaires – construct a reservoir. They say they’ll do the right thing, but last time we saw the sale of a big property to these folk in the neighbouring district, they left the hillsides bare and vulnerable to erosion. No, I’m sorry. I won’t support this sale and I hope I’ve got you behind me on this.’

  It was a call to arms and it seemed to have worked because people got to their feet and started to cheer. Fletcher muttered: ‘What next?’ and we soon found out. The mayor wanted to take questions from the floor, all of which ran against us. Lynda Catalano from the Catalano family – old Roblians, who’d planted some of the first Paso vines in the 1880s – talked about the small-town feel she loved. ‘Paso is Napa thirty years ago. Quality wines at decent prices. Family-operated businesses. We’re still not producing three thousand cases a year at our vineyard. We don’t want the highways choked with traffic.
We don’t want industrial scale.’

  Townsfolk and ranchers, sitting with their arms crossed over round stomachs, nodded their approval.

  A young person with a knitted cap stood up in the back row of seats, saying: ‘Like Don said, you can’t make it rain. There’s a drought right across California and water needs managing but I seen pictures of where those Pinkhound billionaires live. They’ve got swimming pools and green lawns and fountains in the driveway. Don’t tell me they care about water conservation.’

  Don Burnbank rose a second time, saying: ‘That’s what I was saying: the drought is getting worse. Climate change is coming. You’ve got polar bear numbers down and the number of flies up …’

  ‘He’s a bumbling idiot,’ muttered Mom beside me.

  Fletcher hissed: ‘Can Pinkhound not shut him up?’

  Another woman rose.

  ‘Climate change is real! And large-scale development – it’s not why we came here.’ She had the quavering voice of somebody not accustomed to speaking in public but determined to have her say. ‘We came here for the feeling of community.’

  Fletcher rose, as if to speak, but Fiona put her hand on his forearm and got him to sit down again.

  ‘Leave it to the Pinkhound people,’ she whispered.

  The meeting ended with a special round of applause for Don, and another for the mayor. There were some awkward scenes afterwards, as people tried to engage Fiona and Tim directly while Caroline tried to usher our family out. We climbed back into our battered trucks and followed white lines up the dark roads, back to the estate.

  Fletcher paused in the kitchen. ‘I need a whisky,’ he said.

  Tim found the bottle and fetched the ice. Sol shook her head, meaning: not for me. She’d barely said a word during the meeting and the ride home. Fletcher took a swig and sloshed the whisky around in his mouth. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Don Burnbank is a total moron.’

  Sol went to speak, stopped, then tried again, saying: ‘From what he said, he’s been here a long time. You can’t blame him for being upset.’