Chapter 16 #2
Three and a half hours after she’d begun her research, Melody came back to find her. “You’ve been at this a long time.” She crossed her arms.
Celia groaned. “I can’t find what I’m looking for.”
“And what is that?” Melody arched a single eyebrow.
Celia couldn’t find a reason not to tell this perfect stranger some version of the truth. “I know the Smith family is up to something. I know they don’t have the town of Bluebell’s interests at heart. But I can’t prove it. Or I don’t know what I’m looking for to prove it.”
Melody stuck out her hip and clicked the heel of her shoe against the ground. Celia raised her eyes to watch her.
“Honey,” Melody said, “why didn’t you say something earlier? I could have pointed you in the right direction like that.” She snapped her fingers.
Celia couldn’t fathom why this woman wanted to help her.
But Melody smiled and, under her breath, whispered, “I used to work the books over at the Smith Company. They’re about as crooked as they come.
But the biggest mistake they made was firing me.
They made me sign an NDA, of course. But the NDA didn’t say anything about sending a young and bright journalist like yourself in the right direction.
” She winked and opened the relevant drawer before marching away.
Celia was out of her mind with surprise.
What she discovered in that drawer couldn’t have been put there on purpose by anyone in the Smith family.
There was proof that they’d cooked the books to avoid taxation, proof of fraud, proof of pushing other companies out, and proof of bribing various members of government to ensure they could continue to build in areas meant to be protected for environmental reasons.
She wondered if Melody herself had been instrumental in ensuring that these documents were here, ready proof for a journalist like Celia.
Celia busied herself at the copier, watching as the proof slid out on more and more pieces of paper, spreading.
When she finished, she thanked Melody, who pressed her finger to her lips and reminded her, “If anyone ever learns that you’re up to this, they’ll make you pay.
Please, be careful, honey. But get even for me, won’t you? I hate them down to my guts.”
* * *
For weeks, Celia worked tirelessly on her takedown of the Smith family.
She pored over the documents Melody had given her, outlining a corrupt and evil family who’d destroyed numerous lives and planned to “rule” Bluebell Cove as though it were a kingdom and not the United States.
In this place, everyone was meant to have a chance.
Her article was sleek, hard-hitting, and built on factual evidence.
She saved it on her at-home computer, on the computer at school, and on a floppy disk.
She also printed it out, terrified that technology would fail her.
A week before she planned to pitch the idea to her newspaper staff, she returned to Bluebell Cove to take over the front desk for Ivy, something she was trying to get better at doing, especially now that she was so close to her departure for Georgetown.
Her autumn dorm room was calling her name, as was her brand-new life. She could taste change on the horizon.
But when she entered the inn, she found her father at the front desk instead of Ivy. His face was ashen, and he glowered at Celia with more rage than she’d ever seen. “My office,” he said, pointing behind him. “Now.”
Celia crossed her arms and glared right back.
She’d just had her eighteenth birthday, and she didn’t take kindly to being treated this way.
This deep in her “womanhood,” she’d more or less decided that her father had made her mother’s short life miserable, and he’d been the reason she’d gotten so sick in the first place. She’d begun to learn how to hate him.
“Now!” her father bellowed, and the sound struck a nerve in Celia, forcing her around the front desk and into his office.
She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her.
She remained standing as her father stormed in, slammed the door behind him, and said, “I always knew you didn’t care about this family, but this really takes the cake. ”
“What are you talking about?”
Her father’s breathing was ragged. He stabbed his finger on the desk. “Do you know the kind of threat we’re under? Now that you’re playing this little game with the Smith family?”
Celia felt as though she’d been smacked. But she pretended she didn’t know what he was talking about. “I’m not playing any kind of game.”
James let out a mirthless laugh. “I’ve just received a letter from Mr. Smith’s lawyer,” he said.
“They’re going to sue us for everything we have if you go ahead with your little article.
They’re going to rip us to shreds. We’ll lose everything, Celia.
We’ll lose the inn. We’ll lose the house.
Your sisters won’t have food to eat or clothes to wear.
You’ll be gone, so what do you care? But we’ll be ruined. ”
Celia was stunned into silence. She thought she had been so careful. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
“If you don’t understand, then maybe you aren’t smart enough to go to Georgetown,” her father shot back. “Maybe you don’t understand how the world works.”
Celia felt as outraged as a toddler. She reached for something, anything to throw, and landed on a pen, which she hurled to the corner.
“Maybe you don’t understand!” she cried.
“I know how you treated Mom. The girls don’t remember, but I do!
I know how sick she was! I know she was sad, because you made her sad!
” Her voice was shrill and awful in her own ears.
Her father blinked and blinked, his hands in fists. “You don’t know anything,” he said
“I know everything!” Celia howled.
Before her father could answer, before he could try to convince her of something she already knew was wrong deep in her bones, Celia bounded out the door and slammed it behind her.
She felt like she was going to faint. Out she went, down to the cove, where she picked up stone after stone and threw them into the angry ocean.
She couldn’t believe that the Smith family had discovered her article, couldn’t believe that the monstrous company had bested her.
But as she hurled more stones into the sea, she realized that she’d been a fool to think that she, a girl of eighteen, could ever defeat an ancient and powerful company.
She pledged to keep going, to keep trying to right the wrongs of society. But she knew that she couldn’t publish the article, not now that Wren’s, Juliet’s, and Ivy’s lives were at stake.