Page 33 of The Worst Possible Plan

Hartwell was standing in the middle of three food trucks with increasingly impatient vendors and what looked like the beginning of another public argument. She appeared overwhelmed. Drowning quietly. She wasn’t trying to control the conversation so much as catch every word before another problem landed in her lap. Her binder was tucked tightly against her side, her pen already uncapped, like she thought writing faster might somehow make the answers appear. It wouldn’t. But I had to give her credit. She hadn’t walked away.

Most people would’ve started shouting. But she kept trying to listen to everyone at once. Every time one vendor spoke, she’d instinctively turn toward them, only for someone else to interrupt from the opposite direction. She’d nod, apologize, nod again, and then glance at the next person waiting. She looked overwhelmed but too stubborn to admit it.

“Who’s handling parking?” I asked her.

She glanced at me. “Parking?” The hesitation told me everything I needed to know.

I nodded. “For the people attending the festival as well as the vendors.”

She stared another second before looking around the lot. “I…” She frowned. “I don’t know.” She looked genuinely annoyed with herself for not knowing, which told me more than any confident answer would’ve. She wanted to do this job right. She just didn’t know where to start.

“Okay.” I looked toward the pizza truck. “Tony.”

“What?” answered the chef.

“When you unload tomorrow, where are your customers going to park?”

He scratched his beard. “They usually use the municipal lot.”

I nodded once. “Overflow?”

Tony thought about it. “The church lets us use theirs.”

I looked back at Hartwell. “Write that down.”

She flipped open Helen’s binder, nearly dropping her pen before catching it at the last second. She didn’t need me to answer everything. She needed someone to slow the conversation down enough for her to think. Right now, every problem was hitting her at once. My job wasn’t to solve them for her. It was to help her deal with one problem at a time.

Hartwell was writing so fast her pen could barely keep up. She scribbled one note, drew an arrow beside it, crossed out a word, and then squeezed another sentence into the margin.

It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t need to be.

Good.

She was gathering information instead of defending herself.

That was progress.

A volunteer hurried toward us carrying two folding tables. “Sheriff?”

I looked at him. “You’ll have to ask Hartwell.”

He turned toward her. “Where do you want these?”

She stared at the map. After a beat she looked up and glanced around the square. I watched her eyes move from the dessert truck to the pedestrian lane and back again. She wasn’t guessing as much this time. She was thinking. “Beside the dessert truck.”

The volunteer nodded. “Got it.” He disappeared.

Hartwell looked at me. “You knew where those should go.”

“I did.”

“Why didn’t you answer him?”

I stared at her face. Her cheeks were flushed from equal parts frustration and determination, making her blue eyes stand out even more against the morning light. I saw a stubborn streak there too. “Because it should be you.”

She frowned. “I might’ve gotten it wrong.” Her voice had softened, just enough that I wasn’t sure anyone else would’ve noticed. It wasn’t fear. It was the voice of someone who expected to be wrong.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Then you’d know for next time.”