Chapter 7
Bodie
The Commissary—my grandmother’s diner—always smelled like home.
The familiar blend of bacon grease, strong coffee, and something indefinable that I’d always thought of as love itself hung in the air like an embrace.
Grandma Elsie had insisted on fresh flowers in old Mason jars on every table for as long as I could remember, and today bright sunflowers leaned toward the front windows like even they were curious about what chaos the festival committee might unleash.
Due to personal experience, I was more afraid than curious, but in the name of public safety, I was here.
No one else would be able to stand in the face of whatever insanity the Sasspatch Society dreamed up as the next best way to cheer up the town and keep it legal.
We’d crammed three mismatched tables together in the center of the dining room, pushing them into an uneven horseshoe shape with all the available chairs shoved in around them, cheek by jowl.
The seating arrangement would’ve made a fire marshal weep, but nobody complained.
This was how we’d always done things. The din of overlapping conversation filled the diner like a particularly enthusiastic beehive, voices rising and falling in familiar rhythms, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter that tumbled in with the steady clink of sweet tea glasses and the rustle of papers being shuffled from hand to hand.
Someone hollered across the room asking who had the vendor sign-up sheet, while another voice called out about parking arrangements, and Miss Glory’s distinctive laugh cut through it all like a silver bell.
This was small-town democracy at its finest: loud, messy, gloriously chaotic, and fueled entirely by sugar and caffeine.
“Alright, children.” Grandma Elsie clapped her hands together with authority, like she was about to call a revival service instead of wrangle a committee meeting into some semblance of order.
“Let’s bring this circus to order before my coffee pot runs dry and y’all start getting cranky.
We have to settle on what kind of festival we can actually pull off under the circumstances. ”
Beside her, Miss Bea fanned herself dramatically with a glossy program from last week’s one-night stand-up comedy show at our local community theater, the rhinestones scattered across her powder-blue cardigan glittering like tiny stars every time she shifted in her chair.
“Sugar,” she drawled, voice sweet as molasses, “if this is supposed to be a circus, I expect to see some elephants. Or at least a decent trapeze act.”
“Honey, you’d settle for a high school marching band and call it entertainment,” Miss Glory shot back from across the table, looking perfectly turned out in pressed linen the color of storm clouds, not a single wrinkle in sight despite the oppressive July heat that had the rest of us wilting like day-old lettuce.
Mo’nique appeared at that moment like a caffeinated angel of mercy, setting down a heavy tray of golden lemon bars right in the center of the table between them, powdered sugar dusting the tops like fresh snow.
“Y’all better settle for dessert first,” she announced with the wisdom of someone who’d survived more committee meetings than should be legal.
“Nobody plans anything worth a damn on an empty stomach, and I didn’t get up at five this morning to watch y’all argue over nothing. ”
Half the committee reached for the lemon bars before Grandma Elsie could get a single word in edge-wise.
I sat toward the end of the long, scratched table with a stack of forms in front of me—permits, safety requirements, notes about crowd control, insurance waivers that nobody ever actually read but everyone had to sign anyway.
Being chief of police meant I got to be the wet blanket in the room, the voice of reason reminding people we couldn’t pack five hundred bodies into what was essentially a fire hazard with a fresh coat of paint and some bunting.
Uncle Dee, resplendent in a turquoise silk blouse that caught the afternoon light streaming through The Commissary’s windows and enough silver bangles to outfit a whole Mardi Gras parade, leaned toward me with that knowing eyebrow arch he got when he was about to dispense wisdom whether you wanted it or not.
“Don’t look so grim, baby boy. You’re sucking all the sparkle out of the room with that face.
We’re planning a festival, not a funeral. ”
“I’m the one who has to keep folks from setting things on fire,” I reminded him, tapping my pen against the clipboard of insurance waivers with maybe more force than necessary. “Literally. And figuratively, considering some of the ideas that get thrown around in here.”
“Oh, please.” He waved a perfectly manicured hand, bangles creating a symphony of tiny chimes that somehow managed to sound both dismissive and affectionate.
“That was one turkey fryer incident at Homecoming three years ago. People remember it like it was the damn Hindenburg disaster. Besides, as our resident firefighter and expert on all things combustible, that particular brand of chaos is on Colter, not you.”
“I heard that,” my brother’s voice intoned from the other side of the table, where he sat hunched over what looked like a diagram of downtown drawn on a napkin. He didn’t bother looking up, but I spotted the grin.
That set off a ripple of laughter around the table, the kind of easy warmth that only came from people who’d known each other their whole lives.
I shook my head, biting back my own grin despite my best efforts to maintain some semblance of official seriousness.
I loved them. All of them. The whole chaotic, well-meaning bunch with their wild ideas and bigger hearts.
Even when they drove me to contemplate early retirement at the ripe old age of thirty-one. Maybe especially then.
We slogged through agenda items like soldiers marching through mud: budget estimates that made everyone wince, vendor fees that sparked heated debates about fairness, whether the pie-eating contest should feature peach or apple—a topic that somehow managed to consume twenty minutes of passionate discourse.
Arguments flared and fizzled like sparklers, sub-committees were formed, disbanded, and re-formed with entirely new names and the same exact people.
Miss Bea claimed the entertainment lineup with the authority of someone accustomed to getting her way, Mo’nique declared absolute dominion over food vendors with a voice that brooked no argument, and Uncle Dee wrestled parade logistics out of Miss Glory’s elegant but iron grip with promises of sequined floats that would make New Orleans weep with envy.
By the time Grandma Elsie finally called for new business, I was sweating through the back of my uniform shirt despite the ancient ceiling fans working overtime above us.
Rubble, sprawled under the table at my feet like a furry carpet, huffed out a long-suffering sigh that sounded suspiciously like agreement with my current state of mind.
“No new business?” Grandma looked around. “Then I declare us adjourned. Now eat something else before you leave.”
Chairs scraped, voices rose, and the room turned from meeting to party in the blink of an eye.
That was Gibson Hollow for you—business conducted; now let’s laugh and eat.
It was a damned sight better than the constant, back-breaking work of cleanup and rebuilding.
Not that we were done by a long shot, but there was room for more normal life now.
I stood, stretching the kink out of my back, and reached for one of the last lemon bars. Rubble immediately perked up, nose twitching. “Not for you,” I muttered, passing her a treat from my pocket instead. She crunched happily, tail thumping under the table.
“…poor Emmaline Maddox…”
The name cut through the hum of conversation like a blade slicing through silk.
My head came up before I even realized I was listening, the half-eaten lemon bar forgotten in my hand.
Something in the way those words were spoken—with that particular mix of sympathy and barely concealed fascinated glee—made my gut clench.
Two tables over, a tight knot of women had gathered around the remnants of peach cobbler and coffee cups, leaning close the way gossips always did when they wanted to be overheard but pretended they were being discreet.
The positioning was deliberate—close enough to the main gathering that their words would carry, far enough away to maintain plausible deniability if confronted.
One of them—Mrs. Talbot, I thought, the reigning queen of potluck rumors—shook her head with theatrical solemnity, her voice pitched just loud enough to carry.
“Can you imagine? Losing the house and the bakery both? That poor, poor girl.”
My brows drew together. Losing? What the hell did that mean?
“She poured her whole life into that place,” Mrs. Moore chimed in, dabbing at her suspiciously dry eyes with a napkin. “And now it’s all for nothing. Mark my words—Marla and Karen’ll have it ruined inside of three months. Neither of them has the sense God gave a goose or a work ethic to boot.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled, standing up like Rubble’s when she sensed trouble. Under the table, my dog’s ears had perked up, her warm brown eyes fixed on me with that uncanny ability animals had to sense when their humans were about to lose their shit.
I stepped closer to the gossiping circle, my boots heavy on the worn linoleum, trying to keep my tone even and professional despite the way my pulse had started hammering in my temples. “Excuse me. What exactly are you talking about?”