Sunny spun around to face him.“I’ll send you a copy of my auditor’s report as soon as I get home tonight.And while I’m at it, with the acting mayor’s permission, I’ll send it to the Cobbler Cove newspaper to publish for everyone in town to see for themselves.”
She looked over at Bonnie whose eyes twinkled, but her voice was even when she said, “That’s an excellent idea.As acting mayor, I authorize release of your full audit.”
Dale’s jaw sagged.
Sunny looked back at him.“You called her a little lady before.”Sunny’s voice didn’t rise.It dropped, which her children could have warned the room was far scarier.“I’ve been called worse by better men than you, and I’ll tell you the one thing it taught me.Little ladyis the language a man reaches for when he’s run out of good arguments to make.It’s the white flag waved by a man who wishes women would just smile and not use the brains God gave them.”
That got a laugh and a few amens from women in the room.
Sunny squared her shoulders and looked Tolliver dead in the eyes.“Bonnie Watson does not need to pour your coffee.What she needs is for the citizens of this town to stop being tired and self-absorbed long enough to notice she’s been silently carrying this entire town on her back the whole time you’ve been strutting around telling everyone a woman isn’t capable of doing it.”
For one heartbeat the hall held its breath.
Then Tessa stood up out of the front row, set her hands on her hips, and announced to nobody and everybody, “Well.She’s not wrong about that.”And sat back down.
Molly stood.Then Natalie.Then Charlotte.One by one the widows of the Shoemacher fire stood up and declared that they’d watched Bonnie run the town for years and that she was the lynchpin holding the town together
Rose stood up last of the widows.She spoke in a melodious voice that carried to every corner of the room.Sunny had found out at Founder’s Day that Rose was a well-respected stage actress, and every bit of her training showed now as she said with a perfect blend of compassion, exhaustion, and soul-deep emotion, “I think I speak for all the widows of the Shoemacher fire when I say that, no matter how tired you are of hearing about that fire and of being asked questions about it ...”
Rose paused and gazed around the room, making eye contact with members of the crowd and letting the tension build to a crescendo.Sunny was deeply impressed by how fast Rose grabbed the entire crowd’s attention and held it in the palm of her hand.
Rose’s voice took on a note of profound sorrow that was heart wrenching to hear, “...we widows are a hundred times more tired than you of living with that fire every single day of our lives.”
The audience collectively exhaled as if she’d punched them all in the gut.Hard.With her fist.
Rose moved back and forth across the front of the room as if it was a stage, and she completely owned it and the moment.She gestured with her hand at the rows of widows seated before her.“We don’t support this new investigation of the fire because we want to keep it alive.We don’t want to throw it in your faces and remind everyone of how much we all lost.”
Her voice rose and took on power.“We widows want this investigation to find the truth ...”She held a dramatic pause that had Dale Tolliver holding his breath and hanging on her next words.Rose delivered the payoff with passion that rang powerfully with Truth, capital T, “...so we can finallymove onfrom the tragedy.We all have lives to live.Children to raise.Jobs to do.Friends, family, and neighbors to laugh with and love.It’s what all of you want.Believe me, each of us widows wants it more than all of you put together.”
The whole room exhaled as Rose relaxed, letting them all off the emotional hook she’d had them dancing on.
She spoke now in an intimate, conversational tone, as if she was speaking to each person in the room individually.Sunny felt the people around her leaning forward slightly, drawn in to Rose’s personal delivery, hanging on her next words before she even said them.
“You know, the grief counselor who worked with us women and children after the fire said something I’ll never forget.She said closure doesn’t come from forgetting something terrible happened.It comes from understanding how it happened and why it happened.Then, and only then, can we fully let it go and move on.”
People all around Sunny were nodding in recognition of the wisdom in those words.
“I, too, find myself asking why Dale Tolliver’s so desperate for everyone in this town not to know the truth about the fire or about what kind of mayor Lucas was.Doesn’t Dale want us all to have closure at last?Is he so desperate to hide the mayor’s sloppy and possibly nefarious activities that he’s willing to let every single one of you, all of us, live with the unhealed wound of the fire for the rest of our lives?”
“Why, that’s poppycock.You have no idea what you’re talking about, Rose.”
She whipped around, her fury a magnificent thing to see.“Don’t I, Dale?Wasyourhusband the fire chief of this town?Didyourhusband lead eight good men to their deaths?Do you go to sleep every night and wake up every morning wondering if your husband made a mistake that got all those men killed and put this town through hell for the past five years?”
Dale spluttered, clearly at a loss as to how to respond.
“Until you can answer yes to every one of those questions, Dale Tolliver, don’t you dare tell me what I do and don’t know about the wounds this town has suffered.And don’t you dare tell me this town ought to pretend it’s not still bleeding from that wound and that we should just let it bleed forever instead of addressing it, finding its cause, and starting to heal it at last.”
Cheers erupted across the room.It wasn’t everyone, and there were still people scowling about the same way Dale was, but enough of them were on their feet shouting their approval of and support for Rose that Dale, red-faced, snatched up his notes off the podium and stalked out of the Grange hall.
Sunny jumped to her feet with everyone else, her heart pounding like a jackhammer.She had time for exactly one clear thought before the noise took the room in the wake of Tolliver’s disgruntled exit.
A Steele did this for me once.In another life long ago, Reno had stood up in a courtroom and thundered at her thieving, selfish, dishonest husband, forcing him for once in his privileged, spoiled, narcissistic life to face the truth about himself.Reno said all the words she hadn’t had the courage to speak back then, not to her husband, and not to herself.And in speaking the truth like that, he’d set her free.
She’d never found a way to pay it back to him.And in the years since, it had never once occurred to her that she wasn’t meant to pay a thing like that back to Reno.She was meant to pass it down the line to someone else.
And she’d just paid it forward to Bonnie Watson.To the whole town of Cobbler Cove, really.
Her hands shook first.And then her knees.And then her whole body.
