Chapter 11 #4
He was where he’d been when he first came in, leaning against the back wall, not clapping, not whooping with the rest of them.
He was looking at her, steady and unhurried, with a look she might have called plain if she hadn’t spent a month learning to read the fine print on this particular man.
The look in his eyes was something quieter, deeper, and far more dangerous to her composure.
It was the look of a man watching the exact thing he’d been afraid to want.
But then that thing had walked out into the open right in front of him and turned out to be real.
She made herself look away first. It was that or cross the room and kiss him in front of God and half the population of Cobbler Cove.
The Grange hall emptied slowly with folks still buzzing as they trickled out.
The WoWS swept Bonnie up in their midst and made sure no one got near her with anything negative to say.
Gray finally waded through the women and wrapped her in a tight hug.
He murmured something into her ear that finally made her shoulders come down and her spine stop being quite so rigid with bracing for attacks.
Sunny slipped out onto the front steps to breathe.
Night had settled soft and cool over downtown. Main Street lay quiet under its streetlights, the storefronts dark, and away at the edge of town where the streets ran out, she could just make out the lake, flat and inky black.
It still struck her as strange, a town that kept its water at arm’s length, with no houses crowding the lake.
She’d grown where people lived right on top of the thing they loved, be it the ocean or a cliff side view, grabbing as much of it as their checkbooks could afford.
This valley seemed to know better. This way, everyone got views of the lake, unobstructed by houses smashed up against one another, hogging the view for themselves.
Hank came outside and stood beside her without saying anything, which was its own kind of conversation from him. He’d brought out her coat. She hadn’t noticed she’d left it behind.
“I think I just made an enemy,” she said, shrugging on the light jacket.
“You made about four hundred friends and one enemy. That’s a good trade in an election year.” He settled one hip against the rail. “Anyhow, Dale’s been an enemy of truth his whole life. You only shined a light on it for everyone to see.”
“I couldn’t stop myself.” It came out smaller than she meant it to. “That’s the trouble with me, in case you hadn’t noticed. I went years not being allowed to say a word, and now I have no off switch on my words. I say the true thing whether the room can take it or not.”
He was quiet a moment, looking down the dark street toward the water.
“My granddad kept a level hanging on a nail by the door of his tool shed,” he said.
“Wouldn’t build a thing without it. He used to say a level’s no good to you if it only tells the truth when it’s polite to do so.
It tells you if you’re a hair off plumb or it isn’t worth the materials it’s made of. ”
He glanced at her and a ghost of a grin crossed his face. “You’re a level, Sunny. There are worse things in this world to be.”
She braced, out of long habit, for the rest of it, for the but, the gentle critique of having said too much or having said it too abrasively, the veiled admonishment men responded with when a woman said too much in a public space.
But it didn’t come. He’d handed her the compliment and ended it there. She caught herself taking apart his words, looking for a hidden criticism and then, she didn’t. She let the compliment just be what it was.
They stood a while on the steps, in no hurry at all, while the hall lights went out one room at a time behind them. Down the street, the lake held the darkness quietly.
Somewhere in town her four children were eating their weight in pizza under the questionable supervision of several teens. And somewhere in this bruised, exhausted, stubborn valley a woman she admired was being swept through a doorway by her friends in celebration.
And right here on this porch, she was still standing. She’d stood up in a public room and said the true thing, and the roof had not come down on her head. She’d fully expected it to. But it hadn’t.
“I should get home to the kiddos,” she said.
“I’ll walk you to your car.” He didn’t reach for her. He’d gotten very good, she’d noticed, at not reaching for her. He always left the last step for her to take or not, every single time.
He murmured, “Put a kettle on once you’ve got the children down and enjoy a cup of tea. You earned it.”
It was such a small thing, a man telling her to set the weight down for a minute and make a relaxing drink for herself.
She thought of Presley’s flat palm over the one drawing she wouldn’t sell, the true thing kept back and held against her chest, and she understood that she’d done the same thing tonight.
She’d stood guard over something good and refused to let a bunch of worn-out folks and a slick politician talk her into letting it be ruined for the sake of a little peace and quiet.
She went down the steps into the cool dark of Main Street and pulled her coat closer around herself. She glanced at Hank, who smiled a little as he opened her door for her, and she trusted him to still be the same in the morning.