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Zeke said he’d go back to counseling. And he seemed sincere enough. She mentally shook her head. She shouldn’t do it. She shouldn’t take a step backward. But on the other hand, he was right. She did still love him and she didn’t want her marriage to end. So what other recourse did she have? Maybe the counseling would work this time.
“Let me think about it,” she said quietly.
He didn’t ask what she meant by that or what it was she had to think about. The relieved look on his face said he already knew.
Toby didn’t just drool. He was the king of drool. It was like Hansel and Gretel and their breadcrumbs. All you had to do to figure out which direction Toby had gone, was follow the trail of doggie saliva.
“See, Mom, he doesn’t shed!” Cameron had pointed out (with no hint of sarcasm).
“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Claire said (sarcasm included).
The only good thing about Toby was that he was indeed house-broken, for which Mimi was grateful. Especially on a morning like today when she was running late for her meeting at the bank. She’d been dreading it ever since she’d made the appointment with Bruce last week. But if she was going to try to get Billy Brenton for the Spring Into Summer festival, then she needed to know what had gone wrong last year.
She clipped her hair back in a low ponytail, slipped on some pearl earrings, and ran to the kitchen to make sure Toby had water in his bowl, which, yes, he did. She had to admit, the kids were keeping up their end of the bargain. Cameron walked Toby before and after school and always made sure to keep his water bowl filled. And Claire seemed happier now with Buttercup around. She’d had a few friends over the other night and the girls had locked themselves in her room, listening to music and playing with the kitten.
Speaking of the kitten…Buttercup and Toby seemed to be getting along fine (thank goodness!), but Buttercup’s favorite sleeping place was Claire’s bed. Which Mimi had no objection to, except that her litter box was in the laundry room. Yesterday, Buttercup had been left in Claire’s room all day with the door closed and Mimi had come home to find Buttercup whimpering by the door, trying to get out. If Claire wanted Buttercup in her room, then she was going to have to leave the door open when she wasn’t home.
Mimi opened the door and glanced around Claire’s bedroom. Naturally, the bed was unmade and clothes littered almost every square inch of the floor. She tried to rein in her blood pressure. Teenage girls were messy. It was just a fact of life. She wasn’t about to blow her stack over something so inconsequential.
“Buttercup, are you in here?”
A soft little mewl came from somewhere deep under the comforter.
“Okay, so just checking,” Mimi said, feeling a little foolish talking to a kitten. “I’m going to leave the door open so you can get to your litter box. Be a good girl! And don’t make fun of Toby. He can’t help it that he drools.”
Now that the pets were all accounted for, she grabbed her tote and headed out to the minivan. She’d spent last night reviewing the festival papers, making notes of her own, along with a list of questions she wanted Bruce to clarify. He’d been mayor for the past six terms (twelve whole years!) and in that time the festival had declined to the point that it was now a financial mess.
She was going to have to approach him with tact. No one wanted to acknowledge their failures. But hopefully Bruce would be man enough to help her. He might not be mayor anymore, but he still had to want what was best for Whispering Bay.
The Whispering Bay Community Bank was a short five minute drive from her home. Mimi introduced herself to the receptionist and the woman led her to an office in the back of the bank. Bruce sat at his desk looking very important as he stared hard into a computer screen. He waved her into a chair. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Mimi made herself comfortable and waited. She pulled the festival folder out of her tote and laid it across Bruce’s desk.
She waited for at least ten minutes before he glanced back over at her. “Mimi, what can I do for you this morning?” Despite that it was February and cool outside, the top of his balding head glistened with sweat.
“Thank you for seeing
me, Bruce. I have a few questions about the Spring Into Summer festival.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. It’s been a thorn in my side for the past twelve years.”
“I don’t understand, I thought the festival practically ran itself,” Mimi said.
Bruce made an impatient sound. “I don’t expect you to understand the finances, those are pretty complicated, but the bottom line is that every year we don’t raise booth prices, we lose more money. Security alone for this event is killing us. Plus, there’s the tents and the portable restrooms we have to rent. Chairs, lights, you name it. All that gets more expensive each year, but our revenue has stayed the same.”
The current price for a business to rent a booth at the festival was two hundred dollars, and Bruce was right—the rate hadn’t been raised in over ten years. Mimi had thought it was reasonable, but maybe Bruce had a point. Maybe the festival should increase the booth price, although she hated doing that. It wasn’t just local businesses that rented booths. Housewives rented booths to sell their arts and crafts. Plus, there were dozens of non-profit organizations that rented booths at half that cost.
“But, the main purpose of the festival isn’t just to raise money. It’s to promote the town and the local businesses, right?”
“Yes, but the festival also has to sustain itself. It can’t drain money from the city budget.”
Mimi nodded. This was the part of the conversation she’d been dreading. “Um, what happened last year with the whole Billy Brenton thing?”
“What do you mean what happened?”
Playing dumb didn’t look good on Bruce. Mimi was a patient woman, but she hadn’t come here to play cat and mouse with him.
“What happened, as in, why didn’t he show?”
