Page 60 of Worth the Trouble

“My name is Cecelia Williams. Most of you know that.” A few people laughed, which she hadn’t planned on, and she nodded. “I’m not going to speak for the proposal or against it. I’ve spoken for it often enough and it isn’t my job anymore. I won’t speak against my father in a room where he can’t answer. Since he’s already had time to speak his mind, he can’t respond to any comments on the record.”

She looked at the council, one face at a time.

“I’m asking one thing. Vote on the land. Not on him, and not on me. That’s the whole reason I paid for the flyers. I wanted to make sure everyone who has a stake in this has a chance to speak on it.” She took a breath. “I’m going to be living here in Rocky Ridge either way. I’ll be just fine no matter what happens next.”

She stepped away from the microphone before anyone could clap. She didn’t want it, and she’d said what she came to say. She took her seat between Rylee and Wendy, and neither of them said a word. Wendy put her hand on her knee and left it there.

She didn’t look at her father.

She looked at the back wall, and the man in the cowboy hat hadn’t moved.

“Call the vote,” the councilwoman said.

It took less than a minute. One yes, from Kyle Sinclair on the end, who’d been for it from the start and everyone knew it. Four no. The councilwoman said “The motion fails” as flatly as she’d said everything else, and brought the gavel down once, and that was the sound. Not a cheer.

Then the noise came, everything at the same time, chairs and coats and people who’d been sitting a long while, and Cecelia sat in the middle of it and didn’t get up.

Her father was folding the easel.

Nobody was helping him and nobody was going to. He had the renderings under one arm and the portfolio under the other. He was trying to collapse the legs with one hand, and it wasn’t working. He didn’t look up as the room moved around him without touching him.

She stood.

Rylee let go of her wrist. Faith moved her knees so Cecelia could get past, and didn’t ask, and that was the whole of the Dennisons in one motion.

She crossed the gym floor in the gray suit with everyone looking on, and the last twenty feet were the longest walk of her life, longer than the one into City Hall that she’d done in front of strangers.

She took the renderings out from under his arm.

He let her.

She held them while he got the easel legs to fold, and when he straightened up he was close enough that nobody else could hear, and he looked at her as he had in the hallway. The full appraisal. The one that found the wrinkle.

There wasn’t one.

“Front row,” her father said.

“I told you.”

“I saw.” He took the renderings back from her, carefully, as you take a thing from someone who’s earned the right to hand it to you. “I saw you the whole time.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Jason held the door for those leaving the meeting because he was standing beside it and he was a gentleman. The people passed by in twos and threes and made short comments to him and each other. “Good vote.” “A bit chilly tonight.” “Heard you took the Forsythe colt.”

Mrs. Bailey came through with Danny and gave him a nod. The young man in the feed store cap came through with his shoulders up and didn’t look at anybody.

Jason said his name and the kid stopped. “Tate’s short a hand through calving. You should come by.” The kid looked at him for a second and then went on out, walking with a bit of a spring in his step.

Tate went to get the truck. Wendy went by with Tripp and said, “Did you see her?” to nobody in particular, and Rylee squeezed his arm on her way past and didn’t say anything at all.

The gym slowly emptied. Cece came out last.

She had her father’s easel under one arm and he had the renderings, and they crossed the lot together to the rental car without talking. Jason stayed at the door. This wasn’t his situation to walk into. He’d learned that the same place he’d learned the rest of it, in a round pen, where the whole trick was knowing when not to move.

Reginald put the easel in the trunk and closed it. He stood a moment with his hand on the lid. Then he looked across the lot at Jason, and Jason looked back, and there wasn’t anything in it either direction that needed saying. The older man nodded once. Jason touched his hat.

Then Reginald said something to his daughter that Jason didn’t hear, and got in the car, and drove off toward the lodge road. Cece stood in the lot with her arms wrapped around herself, and then she turned around and came to him.