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Still, Sally’s accusation doesn’t add up. Mayor or not, my father hasn’t done anything wrong.
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever might have happened, my father wasn’t a part of it.” So much for trying to hide it.
“He might not have been a part of it then, but he’s sure a part of it now. Everyone in power is a crook, and he’s the leader of them all.”
“Wait, just a—”
Finn presses a hand to my shoulder, and my temper cools. We have one shot here, and my outrage could blow his chances. I press my lips together and swallow my defensiveness, thinking I’ll come back to this later when Finn’s article is published. For now, I take a deep breath and let him do the talking.
“Can you tell me what makes you think that?” Finn asks, hand still on my shoulder.
Sally’s gaze softens a bit when she looks at him, just for a second, but then the hard look returns with a jerk of her head.
“Where’d you get that scar on your chin?”
It’s unsettling the way the woman can deliver the sharpest accusation on what seems like the most innocent question. Finn shifts in place.
“An accident when I was a baby. I don’t remember it.”
Sally’s gaze intensifies as though she’s turning over his answer in her mind. When she mutters“an accident,”I’m turning things over in my mind as well. I glance at Finn, still holding that pen in his hand and waiting for her to go on. After a tense second, Sally drops whatever has her bothered and looks Finn in the eye.
“You want to know my version of what happened in that fire?”
I hear Finn’s intake of breath. Will it really be this easy?
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
Sally smiles then. Slow and measured, but an undeniable smile. Delighted, even. No one in Silver Bell would believe what I’m seeing.
“Alright, son,” she says. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. And that paper you got in your lap?” She nods once toward his notebook and pen.
He looks down at them and then back up at her. “Yes? Is it okay if I take notes?”
This time she laughs in a loud burst, and it’s so startling that I nearly fall out of my chair.
“Oh, you can take notes. And then you can print every single thing I say in that paper of yours. Word for word. By the time you leave here—if you want it to be—your whole article will be written. Don’t even have to credit me for it.”
“I’ll credit you,” Finn says. “All you have to do is start talking.”
So, she does.
I should feel relieved for Finn.
All I feel is dread for my town. My friends.
My father.
Me.
17
Finn
I’m sick to my stomach, uneasy at her account of that day, outraged without knowing why. What exactly is she accusing the town of doing?
“What happened after that?” Sally doesn’t respond, just stares out the window, likely still lost to the past. Do I even want to know her answer? Is her implication real?
One look at Billi’s pale face tells me she’s wondering the same thing with a few of her own thoughts thrown in for good measure. She grew up in this town, and she has a history of treating this woman as badly as anyone else or at least turning the other way and quietly allowing it in a show of small-town solidarity. And I get it, I do. Even though it might take on different forms, we’re all guilty of doing the same thing to people in our own twisted ways.
