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“Autre is…Autre,” Beau said, dragging his spoon through his gumbo. “She already knows it. It’s got limitations. Becca deserves to have new adventures, a wide-open world, all the opportunities.”
“You’re afraid she’s going to leave and the closer you get to her, the more that’s going to hurt. So you’re pushing her away. You’re trying to make her leaving happen sooner versus later.”
He sighed. She was right, of course. “That’s part of it, yeah.”
Ellie just stood studying him for several long moments. Then she said, “She could leave you while stayin’ right here, you know.”
Beau blew out a breath and lifted his eyes. “So this isn’t gonna be a pep talk then?” he asked dryly.
“This is gonna be a talk,” she said, moving to lean in on the bar. “If you get some pep out of it, great. But the main thing you need to get is the truth.”
He pushed his bowl back. Ellie gave these talks on a regular basis. He’d seen them happen. And he’d seen the results. He knew this might hurt a little, but he was ready. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Adventures don’t always involve travel,” Ellie said. “Adventures are about discovering new things and having those things change your mind and heart. And, thank the good Lord, they can happen on your own front porch. Or while sitting on a bar stool. Or while sitting in a classroom. In fact, if they don’t happen while sittin’ in a classroom, you’re not payin’ attention.”
“And Becca’s going to give a lot of people great adventures that way,” Beau agreed.
“She’ll be takin’ plenty too,” Ellie said. “Every time you interact with another human in a meaningful way, you discover something, and you change a little bit. And it doesn’t matter if the town it happens in is big or small, if the people around you are idiots or geniuses, if the building you’re in has a million-dollar budget or barely keeps the lights on. It’s about two people seeing each other, learning from each other, and being different afterward.”
Beau pulled in a breath. “I’m not saying that Becca couldn’t do great things here. Of course she could.”
“And the kids in that school go home and influence their families who are a part of this town. They grow up and become the adults in this town. They take care of the other people in this town. I want those kids to be taken care of, to learn as much as they can, to be taken on the right adventures,” Ellie said.
“Things are just so hard with her dad and some of these parents. Some of the people here don’t want ‘adventures’.”
Ellie scoffed. “That’s the thing about life—it gives you adventures whether you want them or not. It’s how prepared you are for them and what you do with them that matters. Regardless of their parents, those kids deserve to have Becca’s help getting them ready.”
“But—”
“This town is not perfect,” Ellie went on as if he hadn’t started to speak. “I’ve never believed that it is. But if all the good people who want to solve the problems leave, the problems will never get solved. We need people who have the passion and the knowledge to make things happen. Becca wants Autre to be better. She’s got the love and passion for it, but you’re happy to let her take that up to Houma.”
Okay, now Ellie sounded accusatory.
“Things are hard for her here,” Beau said. But he knew that his voice had lost some heat. “She can still help kids be amazing and make the world a better place from Houma.”
“So she and her dad are gonna butt heads sometimes. So what?”
“I want her to love her work. I want it to be the job she’s always dreamed it would be. She shouldn’t have to go to work every day and be tense and stressed out, should she?”
“I come to work and am tense and stressed out a lot of days and all I’m doing is serving beer and grits. She’s teaching. She’s shaping lives, she’s expanding minds, she’s teaching little people about theworld. That’s an important job, and if it matters to her—which I know it does—then doing it well will cause some stressful days. And that’s what she needs good friends and a loving family for. She won’t have that in Houma.”
“Her dad is part of the problem here. I think it’s really uncomfortable for him to be his daughter’s boss.”
Ellie scoffed. “Her dad is a man with some authority. People in positions of power need to be uncomfortable.”
“You think Jonathan should be uncomfortable?” Beau knew that Ellie liked Jonathan a lot.
“Of course. People who are in charge of things, especially when they’re in charge of other people, need to be questioned and they need to have answers to those questions. When they get too comfortable, when they get complacent, that means things aren’t changing and they’re not being challenged.”
Beau knew he could argue that Becca’s friends and family would still be her friends and family and would be there for her even if she was in Houma, but this was Ellie Landry. He sincerely doubted she’d ever had an argument that she hadn’t won.
And that was probably because she was always right.
Stubborn too, for sure. But also right.
“You really think that she should stay here, and deal with all of that. And not be happy?” he tried one more time because, well, he was stubborn as hell too.
“She won’t be happy? Just because something’s hard doesn’t mean that it’s not wonderful. When we have to fight for things, we figure out what’s important to us. Being challenged can be amazing.”
