Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
AVERY
I take a deep breath and count to ten but I still want to throw my laptop across the room. Not because I’m mad at Josh. I just don’t want anybody to make decisions about CPR kids’ programming until I’ve had my say.
I always thought that what Daisy called being a doormat was just being kind and generous with my time. But over the past few days, I’ve realized that a little gremlin of resentment hides underneath that helpful facade. When I’m assertive instead of passive, I can be the one to make things happen.
Best of all, I kind of like this version of myself.
It’s a lot easier to be productive when you’re not running around taking care of everyone but yourself. And learning how to say no, even to just a few things, has opened up all kinds of mental space to focus on things that are important to me.
I finally got Leia to share the complete survey results with me, and after reading through them, it’s crystal clear that Playgroup has to go. The highest priority for families now is after-school care, preferably a program that includes enrichment. It’s hard for working parents—even ones working from home—to pick their kids up and drive from one activity to another. Even harder to cough up the money to pay for things like art classes or language lessons. But colleges expect applicants to have those things on their resumes.
Meanwhile, they’re getting cut from school budgets right and left.
If CPR could provide these activities in one place after school, it would go a long way toward fulfilling that need. But we have the same problems parents do: costs and transportation. I know there’s an answer. I can feel it tickling the back of my skull. But it just won’t reveal itself.
“Sweet baby Cheez-Its!” I yell in an effort to jog something—anything—loose from my brain.
“You know kids don’t believe in your so-called swear words, Aunt Avery.” Riley Blake intones this from my doorway with the practiced ennui of a fourteen-year-old going on forty. She and her twin brother Owen aren’t related to me, but I love being their honorary aunt.
“Says you,” I shoot back. “Total bullnickles anyway, because you did.”
Leia’s daughter rolls her eyes in the exact same way her mother did when we were in middle school. “When I was five maybe.”
“Exactly. My target audience.”
She leans against the doorframe. “What’s making you so dadgum upset anyway?”
“You know I stopped using that one. Kids kept begging me for dad gum.”
“Whatev, Aunt Avery.”
I’m about to shoo her out so I can concentrate, when I realize that she’s exactly what I need. One of the walls I keep running into in my research is regarding teen jobs in Greene County. Either there are no jobs for young people during the school year, or the jobs that exist aren’t advertised. Maybe the actual teens can fill me in on their employment situation. “You know, you just might be able to help me with this. Is your brother around?”
Instead of pulling out her phone to text him, Riley just turns her head and yells, “Ohh-wen! Get your bench in here!”
I look down so Riley doesn’t see my smile. She probably doesn’t even realize she’s substituted “bench” for “butt.”
Owen appears, panting, a few moments later. “’Sup.”
“Aunt Avery needs us, Shorty.”
“Stop calling me that.”
When he attempts to shove her, she deftly ducks under his arm and glides into the room. “Just callin’ it like I see it.”
Owen follows her, chest out. “You’re like, half an inch taller than me.”
“Like two inches you mean. I thought you were the math wiz.”
“I am. And you need glasses.” He straightens. “Right, Aunt Avery?”
I hold up my hands. “Not getting involved. But I do have a favor to ask.”
“What do we get for it?” Owen asks.
Riley hip checks him before flopping into a chair. “Shut up, Shorty. You don’t get paid for a favor.”
“Not even candy?” he asks hopefully before sitting down next to her.
“Don’t tell your dad.” I pull a box out of my bottom drawer and we each take a piece of locally made fudge.
“So what’s the fav?” Riley asks between licking her fingers. It’s like she speaks in texts these days.
“Weelll,” I begin, moving papers around until I find a legal pad. “I’m wondering if you two think there’d be a demand in your peer group for after school jobs?”
“Definitely,” Owen says at the same time that Riley asks, “Like, what kind of jobs?”
“Working with elementary school kids.”
Twin sets of eyes widen slightly, then twin heads whip to face each other. Some sort of twin mind meld happens for a few moments before they turn back to me.
Owen says, “Well, it depends.”
“Yeah,” Riley says. “We’d have to have a noncompete clause in our contract.”
“A what now?”
Riley crosses her legs and leans back in her chair. “It’s not easy working with teens’ schedules.”
Owen shrugs. “That’s why we created the app.”
“App? What app?”
Riley kicks her brother. “Owen.”
“What? I thought we were?—”
“Yeah, but not like every detai?—”
“It’s Aunt Avery.” Owen points at me. “She’s too old to figure shit like this out.”
“Owen. Language,” I say before adding with a shudder, “I’m too old? For what?”
After another silent exchange, Owen makes a you do it gesture at Riley. She sighs and sets her elbows on her knees. “Owen and me have a babysitting business. Parents and teens subscribe to our app, and we match them for gigs.”
I knew my friends’ kids were smart, but this is next level. “How long has this been going on?”
“Um…” Riley looks at Owen, like she can see the timeline in his face. “We started babysitting when we were twelve after taking that class your mom offered. Then we got so popular we started farming out the jobs to other people. Then Owen made the app a couple months ago.”
“But your mom always says you’re too busy to babysit.”
“We’re too busy running a business to babysit for free for her friends,” Riley clarifies.
“Anyway,” Owen adds. “Riley would rather manage people than actually babysit.”
“Well, yeah, duh. Who wouldn’t?”
“She likes bossing people around,” he adds.
She huffs. “Also, so I can choose who I sit for, dummy.”
“The people with the best snacks?” he asks.
“The people with the best rules. Whose kids have, like, bedtimes.” She shrugs. “And snacks.”
I sit back in my chair, mind reeling for a moment before circling back to my own problem. I’ve been hoping we could use teenagers to do the bulk of the work. It would give them something meaningful to do after school, and we’d only have to pay real salaries to a couple extra staff members to act as supervisors. “So… do you guys, like, have teen jobs covered already?”
Riley tips her head to the side, nodding slowly. “I think there’s a market share for this. Especially on the parent side of things. Our prices are too high for a lot of families. Plus, it’s harder for kids without cars. As it is, we have to match kids our age with families they can bike to.”
“Or if it’s the weekend, the parents drive,” Owen adds.
“That’s the other issue,” I say. “I’m not sure what to do about transportation.”
“What about school buses?” Owen asks.
“What about them?”
“A couple of the bus routes go right by CPR.”
“They do?”
“How do you think we get here?” Riley asks.
I’d never thought about that. “So, both the students attending aftercare and the students working for us would just ride the bus?”
“I mean, you’d have to talk to whoever makes up the schedules and routes, but yeah,” Riley says.
“Then they can all get picked up by their parents at dinnertime,” Owen says.
I’m jotting down notes as fast as I can, getting really excited about this. Parents might want to take a fitness or art class at the end of the workday before picking up their kids. Or they could just chat outside, meeting their neighbors. CPR aftercare could be the kind of community builder Playgroup used to be.
“But do you think enough teens would be interested?” I ask, dreading their answer.
“Like we said, it’s complicated,” Riley says. “You’d have to work around sports practices.”
“And other school activities.”
“But those are all during school now.”
“Not 4-H.”
“True.”
“But if it could be a thing to put on your, like, college resume?—”
“People would totally be into that.”
“Because except for farm harvests?—”
“Or babysitting.”
“There’s, like, nowhere for kids our age to work.”
“Only if their family has a business?—”
“Like the diner, but?—”
“Everyone who works there is a family member, and?—”
As they go on like this, finishing each other’s sentences, arguing about one point, agreeing on another, it suddenly hits me. They remind me of Leia and Eli back in high school. And that mouth twist Owen just did—that was Eli too.
Son of a bitch.
Riley gasps. “Aunt Avery! Did you just cuss for real?”
“Um, no.” I jump up from my seat and move papers around. “I said son of a biscuit, like I always do, but that’s bad enough. Thanks for the info, guys, but I just realized I’m supposed to…”
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this info. If it is actually information. If Leia wanted me to know that Travis isn’t the twins’ father, she would’ve told me. Maybe not back in high school, when the year and a half age difference made her seem much older, but surely she’d have confessed at some point in the past fourteen years.
I could be way off base, anyway. The two men have similar coloring. If Eli worked out, he’d have the same build as Travis. And even if it were true, Travis and Leia do an amazing job of co-parenting the twins; they always have. No need to stir up a hornets’ nest for no good reason.
“Are you okay, Aunt Avery?”
“Of course. Thanks again for your help.”
After a shared glance that makes it clear they know something’s up, they say, “Ohhh-kaaay” in tandem before Riley pushes Owen out of the way so she can beat him out the door.
“Does this look like a penis?”
I never had a one-on-one meeting with the mayor of Climax before, but this is not how I imagined things would go. The woman looks more like a New York fashionista than a small-town bureaucrat, but that makes her query and the picture she’s holding up even more confusing.
“Um, rocket ship is the first thing that came to mind, actually,” I fib. Not saying the p-word to the mayor, even if she said it first.
“Ugh. This damn artist we hired to create a new logo for Climax keeps making the clock tower look like a pecker.”
“Maybe if they made those bushes less prominent,” I suggest, pointing at the rounded forms at the base of the tower.
“Those don’t even exist in real life! I told her I need more City of Love, less City of Dying by Mercury Poisoning, but I can’t have a logo that looks like a schlong! And the neon glow? It’s like we’re selling radioactive sex toys or something.”
Muttering obscenities that would make a sailor blush, she slaps the paper with the offending image face down on her desk before looking up at me like she forgot I was here. With a flick of her hand, she orders me to sit.
Flinching slightly, I perch on the edge of a chair. But before I can hand her a copy of my proposal, she folds her hands in front of her and leans closer. “Speaking of our clock and its magical properties, how was your”—she waggles her eyebrows suggestively—“weekend away with Climax’s newest eligible bachelor?”
Since Eli was the one who was supposed to go to the conference, I ask, “You mean Elijah Ransom?”
She huffs. “No, not Ransom. He’s obviously hung up on someone from his past. I mean the adorable, widowed father. Find any harmony with Mr. Harmon?”
“But Josh wasn’t even supposed to go on the trip. Nor was I, for that matter. How do you?—”
She waves an irritated hand in the air. “It’s my job to know everything that goes on in this town, missy.”
High school civics was a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure that gossiping about town employees’ love lives is not in the mayor’s job description.
“Especially when it means I might get a fresh story for the CCC.” She picks up a copy of the town’s weekly paper and opens it to point at a column on the second page. “The Climax Clock Column, see? I’m hoping to revive interest in our town as a romantic getaway with tales of the clock that predicts true love.”
I clear my throat, needing to get back on track. “Mr. Harmon and I did indeed have a fruitful weekend?—”
The mayor gasps, a hand to her heart.
“Not that kind of fruit,” I assure her, even as my cheeks heat just saying his name. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I am here to talk about a proposal for a new after-school childcare program at CPR. Inspired by a workshop at the conference,” I add, in response to her frown.
“Fine,” she says on a sigh. “I guess that’s important too.”
Fifteen minutes later, I have the mayor’s stamp of approval. Problem is, she pointed out that Trede will have to sign off on it, since it requires a shift in resources. I’m not ready to talk to Josh, so I suppose that means I’m going straight to the top.
I just hope Eli remembers who I am this time.