Chapter 20 Sebastian
They weren’t saying anything as Sebastian drove them back into town, but every now and then a quiet laugh would escape from
one of them or the other. He was grateful for the laughter. He didn’t know what he was going to do when their frantic escape
from the Fielding farm was forgotten and the focus was once again on everything before it.
When she texted, he’d just wandered out from the pines after his lather-rinse-repeat regimen of screaming at the sky until
his voice gave out, running along the trails until he got winded, and then skipping stones across the partially frozen pond
until the frustration boiled up in him again.
He and Erin had stopped talking by the end. Long before the end. It had taken a lot of therapy to sort through a lot of things,
but there was no big mystery as to why his marriage hadn’t worked out. It failed because he’d taken for granted that it would
succeed. He’d worked hard at everything else, but he treated his relationship with his wife like it was the one thing he shouldn’t
have to work at.
He couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.
Sebastian may not have had any romantic interests since moving to Adelaide Springs, but he’d tried to apply that hard-won
lesson to all his relationships. He’d have been so much more comfortable, most of the time, if he could have just become a
miserable, antisocial recluse. He knew from experience that it was much easier to worry only about himself. But the first
time he’d found himself in Doc’s clinic, a shaking, numb, unable-to-breathe victim of a severe panic attack—when he was supposed
to be in the off-the-beaten-path little town to relax—he made a promise to the kind doctor he’d just met. He promised not
to take the easy way out.
He took a deep breath and pulled over to the side of the road, just a few yards away from the start of downtown. He put the
Bronco in Park, turned off the motor, and unbuckled his seat belt before turning to face Brynn.
“Would you mind telling me what you were thinking when you told Bill Kimball it was a good idea to bring back Township Days?”
The smile dropped from her lips. Well, that was nice while it lasted. It would have been so much easier to take the easy way out rather than start another fight with her.
She considered the question and then shrugged her shoulders. “I just walked through the door that opened.”
“Because I don’t think you realize—” Hang on. “Oh. I sort of thought you’d make up some excuse.”
She smiled, but only with her mouth. Her eyes looked sad. “It’s always easier to use someone to get what you want if they
want to use you too.” Her shoulders rose and fell again. “Old Man Kimball got some new fuel for what he wants, and I got him
to step aside so I can do what I need to do.”
The honesty was disarming, but he still wasn’t satisfied. “But you’re going to leave. In three days you’ll go back to New York, and the people of this town will be left putting on an archaic, expensive, ridiculous festival—”
“Oh.” The short word was long and drawn out as she raised her hand and dismissively brushed away his words lingering in the
air. “It’s not that bad.”
“If it’s not that bad, why was it the thing you pointed out to Mark Irvine? The evidence you used to convict and sentence
your hometown—”
“Because it’s weird!” She undid her seat belt and mirrored his position, her knee up on the seat. “I’m not denying it’s weird.
How many kids outside of Colonial Williamsburg or, I don’t know, 1776 have to grow up learning musket safety and how to churn
butter? That was our life growing up in this town, until that stupid festival died off. And we didn’t even have the Bean Franklin
and Valet Forge back then. There was a George Wash-and-Go laundromat.”
He was staring at her, irritated, until the smile finally made its way to her eyes, and he couldn’t help but respond in kind.
“Seriously?”
Brynn nodded. “Oh yeah. And back then my friend Wes’s mom ran the diner, where the Bean Franklin is now, and she always had
these punny specials of the day. Eggs Benedict Arnold, Bunker Hill of Bean Soup, Lexington Biscuits and Concord Grape Jam,
Boston Massa-curried Chicken Salad... stuff like that.”
Sebastian laughed. “It’s ridiculous. I mean... Bean Franklin would be clever anywhere, I think, when a coffee place is
owned by someone with the last name Franklin. But the rest...”
She nodded. “I know. So stupid.” Her face grew contemplative and she sighed. “But...”
“But what?”
“I don’t know. It was kind of wonderful, too, I guess. We’d all get dressed up in these colonial outfits that Mrs. Kimball
made—”
“Bill’s wife?” Sebastian had never heard anyone speak of her, and he’d never thought to ask.
“Yes. She was a sweet lady. They actually met at one of the first Township Days, in the seventies or whenever. Did you know
that?”
Sebastian tried to do the math. “That wouldn’t make sense, would it? When was Cole’s mom born?”
“She was Mrs. Kimball’s daughter from her first marriage. But they came out here, touring the West—Grand Canyon and such—and
stumbled across Township Days. The rest is history.”
Well, no wonder the stupid thing meant so much to Bill. Not that he ever would have been so human or vulnerable as to say
any of that to Sebastian.
Sebastian leaned his head back against the headrest and exhaled. “We don’t have the people to manage it, Brynn. The people
who want it back are too old to do the work. We don’t have anyplace to stay apart from the inn. The Bean and Cassidy’s are
the only restaurants...” He let his voice fade away. Even he was tired of hearing himself make all the same arguments over
and over.
“So why don’t you work with some of the nearby towns? Team up. Create a whole Colonial Colorado Tour?”
“People won’t want to have to go to a different town just to—”
She dismissed his words again. “Are you kidding? We used to have to go to different towns just to get to school. Hospitals,
movie theaters... Don’t people drive to another town for those things all the time? People spend all day in traffic to
get from one side of LA to the other, and all you have to look at there are the bumper stickers on other people’s cars. Here,
the time on the road will be spent in the clouds, not the smog. The journey from town to town is as much a reason to take
the trip as anything else.”
A lump formed in Sebastian’s throat as he watched her talk and brainstorm without an iota of self-awareness. As he heard her unironically and maybe unknowingly confess her appreciation for the town she claimed to hate so much.
He coughed and cleared away the emotion as subtly as he could so as not to break the spell. “But it’s still a really stupid
idea for a festival, isn’t it?”
“About five hours from here, in Fruita, they have the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival every year to honor this chicken
that lived without a head for eighteen months in the 1940s. In Nederland, up near Denver, it’s Frozen Dead Guy Days, all because
there’s been some dead guy on ice in a shed in someone’s backyard since the nineties.” She tapped her knuckles against his
knee on the seat. “The stupider the better.”
Sebastian smiled at her. “I’m not convinced, but I’m intrigued. I’ll give you that.”
She smiled back and then turned her head and faced out the front windshield. “Me, too, actually.”
He watched her, trying to make sense of her, until Brynn’s eyes flew open and she leaned forward in her seat. Sebastian turned
to follow her gaze and saw Laila loading pies for Cassidy’s Bar & Grill—courtesy of Andi, of course—into the back of her Subaru
Crosstrek.
“You should go talk to her.”
Brynn’s head snapped around to Sebastian, just for a second. Just long enough for him to see the moisture pooling in her eyes.
Then she faced forward again. “It is Laila, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. And I think she’d be really happy to see you.”
She sniffed and laughed and then swiped at her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I figure she’s at the top of the list—”
“Of people who love you?”
A sob broke free, and she didn’t even seem to try to control it. “Sure. Once. But now...”
“What did Doc say? When you had the concussion? That there would always be consequences for your actions . . .”
But the sooner you owned up to them, the sooner you could start healing.
Neither of them needed to say the rest of the words aloud. The message had been received.
Laila closed the gate of her vehicle and began walking into the street, around to the driver’s side, waving to Ken Lindell
who was out sweeping the sidewalk. In one fluid motion, Brynn pushed up on her left knee and held on to the steering wheel
as she leaned over to Sebastian’s seat and kissed him on the cheek. She pulled back and whispered, “Thank you,” and then twisted
around, opened the door, and hopped down onto Main Street.
Brynn yelled Laila’s name before closing the door, and then Sebastian watched as Laila turned back and recognition dawned.
By the time Brynn got to her, running all the way, Laila was rushing toward her, arms open wide.
Sebastian fired up the Bronco again, made a U-turn to head back to Cassidy’s, and wiped from his cheek a tear that he thought
belonged to Brynn, though he couldn’t say for sure.
***
“Hey, Seb.” Cole greeted him as he stepped onto the porch at Cassidy’s. “I saw the Bronco here earlier, and then you vanished.
Everything alright?”
What a crazy amount of humanity had been experienced since he’d thought about passing the time by helping out with inventory.
“Yeah, fine. I was going to see if you needed some help, but some things came up. Sorry about that.”
Cole resumed sweeping the porch. “Nothing to be sorry about. I figured either you had other things to do, or the PTA ladies kidnapped you. Either way, I knew you’d come back to us eventually.”
Sebastian laughed. “I don’t get it. You’re younger... better looking... you can cook...” He unzipped his jacket.