Chapter 7 Asher
Chapter seven
Asher
“Scones,” Brick says, sinking deeper into the couch like gravity’s turned up a notch. His cast is propped on a pillow, crutches within reach, the TV muted to a cartoon he pretends not to watch.
“Scones?” I echo. “That’s specific.”
He nods, serious. “Yes. Scones.”
When I told him to name anything and I’d get it, I expected milkshakes or pizza the size of a manhole cover. Scones feels… British. Also, gentle. I grab my keys from the cup holder by the door.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I tell him, pointing like that ever helped.
He rolls his eyes. “Haha.”
I grin despite the knot in my chest and step into the heat.
It’s been a week since the fall. The first two days of beeping monitors, paperwork, and me pretending to breathe normally while the kid who keeps me anchored slept through half of it.
He’s home now; the color’s back in his face. He’s hungry. For scones.
I back out of our cul-de-sac and merge onto the narrow ribbon of road that passes for a freeway here.
I can still hear Melissa Edwards saying in that steady voice of hers: We do all we can to protect our children, and sometimes the world tips anyway.
That’s when they learn to protect themselves.
It landed in me like a nail finding wood.
Melissa’s tough enough to argue with a thunderstorm and still the chemo wears her down.
If she can keep her chin up, I can survive a bakery run.
I pull into the town’s big grocery—the one with more square footage than its parking lot deserves—and step into a blast of overachiever air-conditioning.
If Brick’s going to be home a lot these next couple weeks, maybe I should look into better locks, better cameras.
Or maybe I should just be home more. Radical concept for a sheriff.
I grab a basket out of habit, even though I’m here for exactly one thing. Aisles glow under humming fluorescents; a handful of shoppers do the slow dance of indecision. I pretend to be a normal person reading labels instead of a man who will move heaven and earth for a scone.
I’m rounding into bakery when I see her.
Jasmine Wallace. Bent over a lower shelf, studying the fine print on a carton like it owes her money. Red hair bright under the lights. White T-shirt tucked into high-waisted jeans like she’s daring gravity to try her.
My feet pause of their own accord. Then move, fast, in the opposite direction—toward dairy, toward anything that isn’t that particular kind of trouble. I scan shelves that do not contain scones and pretend not to feel the tightening in my jaw.
“Excuse me,” I ask the cashier at the express lane, “where do you hide scones?”
“Pastry aisle, third over,” she says, pointing to the exact place I fled.
Perfect.
I return with the humility of a man about to lose an argument, find the scones in a plastic clamshell nestled between muffins and something pretending to be croissants, and drop them into my basket like they might explode.
Then I turn—and almost run into Jasmine.
“Oh, for the love of…” I exhale. We stop, both of us still, the aisle narrowing until it’s just her and me and a shelf of bread that suddenly feels like an audience.
She’s the first to recover. “Really?” she says, eyebrows up. “That’s it? No hello? Not even a hi?”
“I don’t have time for this,” I say, because if there’s a version of this conversation that ends calmly, I haven’t found it yet.
“Oh, great.” She crosses her arms. “Because Ms. Hartley is going ahead with the rig. Maybe you’ll sleep great tonight knowing you helped stamp out anyone who dared protest.”
Scones are heavier than you’d expect. “Are you saying if I hadn’t arrested you, she wouldn’t have done the thing she’s legally permitted to do?”
“Yes,” she fires back, chin lifted. In the overhead light I can see the flush rising on her cheeks, high and angry.
“You really think you could have stopped her?”
“No. But I would have tried.” Her voice edges up; mine follows.
“By ‘tried,’ you mean ‘trespassed on her porch with a bullhorn.’”
“If that’s what it takes to keep our town from being carved up, then yes.”
“Jasmine,” I say, working hard to keep it level, “she has the paperwork. If she’s in compliance, nobody—nobody—can shut her down. Not me. Not you. Not a hundred signs with glitter letters.”
Her eyes spark. “Nothing about my signs is funny.”
“Didn’t say funny,” I mutter. “Said ineffective.”
Her breath stutters. For a heartbeat, something softer flickers under the heat—hurt, maybe—but it’s gone as fast as it came. “Are you really that cold?”
“I’m really not in the mood to argue in front of the bran muffins,” I say, rubbing at the bridge of my nose. It’s not working; she keeps going.
“You know what happens next, right? They drill one hole and suddenly we’re a dot on someone’s energy map. People come in, scrape us out, go home richer to places that don’t smell like diesel.”
“Have you considered there might be benefits?” I hear my voice rise and don’t stop it. “Jobs, Jasmine. Paychecks. People here need work.”
Her mouth opens and closes. For a second, her eyes go damp, and it hits me—the diner, the yellow bars cooling on the rack, the care home fees that don’t pay themselves. “I can’t hand out jobs,” she says, small and honest. “I can hand out flyers.”
“Right now, Ms. Hartley can hand out jobs. Who do you think folks are going to listen to? The woman waving signatures, or the one offering shifts?”
“I’m trying to help the town.”
“You’re trying to preserve it,” I say, and hear how sharp it lands. “I get it. You grew up here. It feels like it belongs to you. But things change.”
“This change is rot,” she says, fiercer than I’ve seen her. “Air and water don’t grow back. Why is it so hard for you to look out a window and see past your statutes?”
“Because the statutes exist, and I took an oath to follow them. You and I yelling in a grocery aisle won’t shift a single permit. The sooner we stop playing tug-of-war with a bulldozer, the better.”
We stand there, breathing hard, two stubborn people with a shelf of sandwich bread barrier between ideals. I’m aware, distantly, of a kid with a cereal box staring and a grandma pretending not to.
“Fine,” she says finally, voice knife-bright. “Enjoy your scones, Sheriff.”
She steps aside and I pass, basket heavy, stomach heavier. At the register, the cashier chirps a total. I pay, nodding at nothing.
In the car, I see her reflection in the sliding doors as she exits with her groceries—back straight, jaw set. For half a second, I regret exactly how I said what I said. Then I imagine her at Hartley’s fence again and my blood pressure spikes all over.
So much for a smooth errand.
***
Brick’s where I left him—propped, calm, the couch his command center. I set the plate and a glass of orange juice on the coffee table with more ceremony than necessary.
“Here you go, bud.” I hover, ready to catch him, the plate, the planet.
He leans forward, careful of the cast, and takes a bite. His brow pulls tight. “It’s fine,” he says around the crumb, which is exactly what you say when it isn’t.
“Not good?”
“It’s okay,” he says, too fast. “I thought maybe it’d be from—” He trails off and takes another bite. “Never mind.”
I sit beside him and pretend not to stare while he finishes the scone with grim determination. He thanks me. I go to the kitchen and butter a slice of toast I don’t want.
Somewhere between chew two and three, Riley’s voice from the hospital drifts back: We’ll do better with the equipment checks.
That’s on us. I’d thought about lawsuits for a hot second because that’s what people do when they’re scared and angry.
Then I looked at my kid asleep under a head wrap, breathing, and decide that surviving counts more than winning.
I told Riley we wouldn’t be filing anything. Felt like choosing oxygen.
The next morning, after a night of cartoons and pain meds and me creeping down the hall to watch him breathe like a weirdo, I ask what he wants for breakfast.
“Scones,” he says again, eyes on the ceiling.
“You sure? Variety is the… spice of life?”
He hesitates. “Yeah. But… not from the store.”
“Okay…” I lean back against the counter. “Then from where?”
“My friend George says the best scones in town are from Scotty’s Diner,” he says, naming it like I haven’t been tripping over its shadow for a week.
I know what my face does because his does the kid equivalent of a double-take. “What?” he asks. “You know it?”
“Everybody knows it.” I stall. “You don’t want, say, pancakes from anywhere else?”
“Scotty’s,” he says, unblinking. When he gets that particular note in his voice, there’s no point arguing. It’s how we ended up owning a hockey stick and not a baseball bat. It’s how his favorite shirt is the red flannel his grandma hates because it “makes him look like a gnome.”
“Right.” I drag a hand over my jaw. “Scotty’s it is.”
He smiles the small, satisfied smile of a boy who has won a minor war. “Thanks, Dad.”
I grab my keys and stand there like a man about to do something brave and stupid. Brave: feed my kid the thing he wants from the place with the good oven. Stupid: potentially walk into the lion’s den when the lion has very green eyes and a talent for lighting me on fire.
“Back soon,” I say. “Plant it, action star.”
“No promises,” he deadpans, then grins.
I step out into the morning, where the light’s sharp and the heat’s already working. There are a half dozen diners and bakeries I could drive to. There’s one he asked for. There’s one I’m avoiding like a teenager who broke curfew.
I get in the cruiser anyway.
On the way, I pass Town Hall, where Nora Alvarez is probably working two jobs at once and making sure the copier doesn’t eat the budget again.
I pass the church where Pastor Jim gives people casseroles whether they want them or not.
I pass the corner where Old Thomas reads the paper and heckles anyone in a uniform with equal opportunity.
This town is a small organism with a loud heartbeat, and I signed on to keep it alive—jobs, protests, and all.
Brick’s voice floats up from yesterday: I thought maybe it’d be from…
He’d stopped himself before he said Scotty’s, like the brand mattered more than the sugar.
Maybe it does. Maybe taste buds have hometowns.
Maybe scones help bones knit. Maybe I just want to make something easy in a week where a lot wasn’t.
I catch myself at a red light and laugh once, low. In the reflection of the windshield, I look exactly like a man en route to trouble and trying to justify it with pastry.
The light changes. I turn onto Main, then onto Brime.
Scotty’s comes into view with its red booths and hand-painted sign and the certainty that if I walk in there, the owner will have something sharp to say about statutes and bulldozers. I pull to the curb and idle. Through the window I can see the line. I can’t see her.
“I’m just buying scones,” I tell the steering wheel. “For a kid who asked very nicely.”
The steering wheel, unhelpfully, does not argue.
I kill the engine, step out, and close the door softly like I’m sneaking up on a deer. The bell over the diner door jingles when I push it open, and the smell hits me—coffee and butter and lemon sugar. Voices, the light clink of plates, Hank doing the crossword out loud.
If she’s on the floor, I’ll deal with it. If she isn’t—if Sarah or the kid with the asymmetrical haircut is running the counter—I’ll buy scones, say thank you, and go home to the only person whose opinion matters right now.
I square my shoulders and step fully inside.
Great.
Just great.