He got in the back seat behind me.
"Audrey."
"Ford."
"Astrid."
"Hi."
He set his hand on the back of my seat between my shoulder blades and the headrest. Not on me. Where I could feel his knuckles through the seat if I let my shoulder go back. I let my shoulder go back.
Audrey watched it in the rearview mirror and said nothing, which was Audrey's whole vocabulary when she'd decided not to say something.
The community hall was on Elm, three blocks from the firehouse, a low brick building with fluorescent light coming out the front windows. The parking lot was full.
Mrs. Halloran was already inside in the second row with her good handbag in her lap. She turned when she saw me, lifted her chin, and didn't smile, which was the Halloran version of anembrace. Caldwell was at the back coffee urn with a Styrofoam cup in his hand. Silver hair brushed back. The fleece vest. He saw me come in. He smiled.
I smiled back. Not the porch smile. The one I'd practiced in a brownstone for six years and could deploy at a man's mother across a dinner table without the man at the table knowing it had happened.
We sat in the third row. Audrey on the aisle, then me, then Easton. He took my hand under the cover of my coat on my lap. He laced his fingers through mine but didn't squeeze.
The chair was a woman in her sixties with reading glasses on a chain and the patience of someone who'd outlasted everyone in the room at least once. She ran through the agenda in a flat municipal voice. Minutes from the previous meeting. A knocked-down stop sign. The fall festival budget.
When she came to my permit, she lifted her head and looked at me over the reading glasses.
"Item six. Veterinary practice application, Dr. Astrid Matthews. Main Street."
She started to read the application.
Caldwell stood up.
The chair looked at him.
"Joe?"
"Madam Chair. Couple of things to say, if I may."
She set the agenda down.
"Floor's yours."
He stepped into the aisle. He stayed three rows behind us, hands clasped at his waist, the position of a man who'd done thisenough times to know not to take the podium for something he wanted to sound informal.
"Thanks, Madam Chair." He gave the room a small smile. "Won't keep you long. Most of you know me. I've been doing what I do up on Elm for about thirty years now."
A chuckle from his corner of the room.
"I'm not here to oppose anything, exactly. I want to say that up front. Dr. Matthews and I had a nice chat on her porch a few weeks back. She seems like a very capable young woman. Her folks were good neighbors, and I'm glad she's home."
He paused. The pause was deliberate, timed with the ease of a man who'd been at this his whole life.
"I just want to make sure we're being honest with each other about what this town can carry. Hartsdale's a small town. We've had one practice for thirty years because that's what a place this size supports." He looked at his hands, then back at the chair. "I have to be honest with the council. I don't want to see a young woman come back to her hometown and put everything she has into a business that this town isn't going to be able to keep open. That's the part I worry about. I'd hate for her to have come all this way for that."
He let it sit.
"I also have to think about the folks in this room who've been my clients for thirty years. Three generations of pets, in some cases. Those folks aren't going to know what to do if the town starts splitting itself in two. They're going to feel pulled. They're going to feel like they have to choose. And in a town this size, I don't know that's a thing we ought to be asking people to feel."
Easton's hand under my coat went still.
