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“Extra, extra—read all about it,” Jo called, waving a paper in the air as her sisters made their way around the dining room slapping papers on all the tables.
“What in the world?” Aggie said with her brows nocked together.
Jo rushed us with that loony smile on her face and held up the front page. “Look at who got busted lying?”
The front of the paper wore a headline that dropped our jaws.
THE TRUTH ABOUT MAYOR MITCHELL
I snatched the paper, and Bettie and Aggie leaned in to read from either side of me.
The article recounted not only the economic study that Mitchell had used to sway the town, but the real study that he’d pressured the company to tamper with, per the string of emails they’d printed up as evidence. It’d all been provided anonymously, the information reportedly acquired from a hack into Mitchell’s email. And what they’d found was damning.
The newspaper had also published the study that Sebastian’s buddy had put together, which aligned perfectly with the original study Mitchell had funded.
The diner murmured in a tense, dark sort of tone. Mitchell had lied to them. He’d tampered with the data to skew it when the truth was that the Goody’s infiltration was not going to benefit the town—it would bury us.
And the vote was tomorrow, far too soon for Mitchell to rebut.
Which meant—
“Oh my God. We have a chance,” Aggie breathed.
“How did this get past Mitchell?” I asked Jo.
“Who knows? Who cares? I guess at the end of the day, the newspaper won’t ignore cold, hard facts, even if they’d spend so much energy spinning things in Mitchell’s favor. This? This is irrefutable. He lied, and now everybody knows.”
Bettie took the paper and brought it closer to her nose. “And they’re gonna be pissed.” A dry, rough laugh escaped her. “Oh, to see Mitchell’s face. I bet that fucker busts a blood vessel in his eye.”
But Jo beamed at me. “We have a chance.”
My smile widened. “We have a chance.”
Poppy wiggled up to the counter. “Mind if we leave this stack of papers here, Bettie?”
“Be my guest. We’ll make sure every table has one.”
“Can we draw mustaches on his picture?” Aggie begged.
“No,” Bettie answered, “but you have my full permission to doodle all the dicks you want.” When we burst into laughter, she shrugged. “No point in doing it halfway. If Pastor Coleburn asks, we play dumb. Got it, girls?”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Aggie said with a wink and a salute. And then she pulled a handful of pens out of her apron and passed them out to my cousins. Giggling, they leaned over the newspapers and got to work.
I shook my head, laughing as I pulled slices of pie for my table.
“What, no dicks for you?” Bettie asked.
“Somebody’s got to work around here, right?”
She watched me for a beat. “We’re gonna miss you around here, kiddo.”
“I’ll miss you too,” I said with my eyes on the pies. I’d have cried if I looked at her.
“I don’t just mean here at the diner. This town’s gonna miss you, and Cilla too.”
“Oh, you’ve done this well without me. I think you’ll survive just fine.”
“Sure. But surviving and being happy aren’t quite the same thing, are they?”
When I swallowed the lump in my throat, she continued.
“Sometimes we mistakenly figure them for equals. We look at those things we need—money, shelter, and the like—and assume having those things will make us happy. But surviving and living aren’t the same thing. I think we forget that, on occasion. Usually when it matters most.”
“We aren’t really talking about waiting tables, are we?”
“Course not.” She smiled at me with hot-pink lips. “Just know we’re here if you change your mind.”
“My job?”
She patted my hand. “That too.”
And with a wink, she turned for the cluster of girls huddled over the newspaper and asked for a pen.
27
Return To Sender
PRESLEY
The town turned out en masse for the Goody’s vote the next day, so many that when the polls opened, there was a line waiting outside the high school a hundred people deep. Priscilla and I had waited our turn—I’d bowed out of working the vote like a chicken so I wouldn’t have to spend a long, hard, awkward day with Sebastian. Mom had taken my place sitting at the processing table at the entry with Daisy and Dottie. Poppy directed traffic, Jo policed the booths, handing out I Voted stickers. But I didn’t see Sebastian and wondered where he’d ended up. Maybe he’d taken a different post under the same pretense that I’d adopted.
Either way, I found myself relieved. And sad. And a dozen other emotions that were too tangled up to figure out what was what.
“Okay, now push that one,” I told Priscilla, and ever so carefully, she hit the button on the final screen of the ballot. “Good job, bug! Thanks for helping Mommy vote.”
