Chapter 6
Chapter Six
"Idon't understand why I have to come," Mason muttered as Ben and he walked into the town meeting for the annual Mistletoe Meadows festival planning. "It's not my fault you don't have any friends and can't get anyone else to go with you."
Ben tried to let Mason's angry words slide over him.
It was true that he didn't have many friends in town.
Sure, Gordon, his deputy, was one, and of course Ben lived with his mother, and he considered her a friend as well as his parent.
But he definitely held himself back from getting too friendly with the locals, especially since he could only imagine how disappointed and upset they would be if his son ended up breaking into something in the town.
He didn't want them to think any less of him because of his son's behavior, but that was hard, since he thought less of himself. Like he hadn't been a good father. Or a good husband, since his wife hadn't wanted to stay.
He tried to shake those feelings off.
"If I felt like you could behave yourself while I was gone, I wouldn't have made you come."
Maybe that wasn't the best thing he could say, because his son's face hardened, and Mason gave him a look that was so withering that Ben almost flinched.
He loved the boy. Loved him with all of his heart and soul. But no matter how much he loved him, he couldn't make him do right or choose to live up to his potential.
Goodness, he didn't even care if the kid lived up to his potential. He just wanted him to not get arrested. The bar was so low.
"Grandma is saving us seats. Come on," Ben said once he found his mother, who had an empty seat on either side of her.
He took a chair on one side while Mason settled down on the other side of Brenda.
Everyone in town was there. At least it seemed like it, as Noah Parker, who owned the music shop in town, called the meeting to order.
As he did so, Ben noted that the new doctor, Hannah Reynolds, slid into the row in front of him, with the receptionist—he couldn't remember her name—sitting down beside her, smiling and giggling a bit before she quieted with the rest of the crowd.
He didn't know why his eyes were drawn to Hannah.
She was nothing like his ex-wife, and he certainly wasn't looking for any kind of romantic entanglement.
Of course, if he were, he would want the exact opposite of his ex, which was pretty much what Hannah was.
Smart and studious, a bit quiet but serious and intelligent.
She also exuded care and concern and competence.
Peyton, on the other hand, had been a whirl of romance, neither one of them doing what they had been brought up to do, but slightly wild and definitely reckless.
She'd been pregnant with Mason when they'd gotten married at the courthouse while he was on leave from the Air Force.
He'd finished his contract and then applied to the police academy. Those were rough years where they were separated more than not, but he thought they'd made it work. He'd tried hard, although Peyton didn't really seem to give him credit for it.
Regardless, things had settled down when he'd gotten a steady job as a state trooper, and he'd figured they were over the roughest patches of their relationship. He'd even suggested more children, which Peyton had been adamantly opposed to.
Maybe because she was already involved with someone else. The thought felt bitter in his mind, and he tried to focus on what Noah was saying.
"It's going to be much bigger this year than last. Last year we broke records.
This year, we need to be a little bit more organized, and we're going to do a few new things.
We're going to have a festival medical director, and we're also going to have a security coordinator.
Security is not just for the protection of the people who are there but also to close down roads, direct traffic, and figure out what state permissions we need, if any.
I'm not even sure how that works. So you're going to have to be able to work independently. "
There was a murmur going through the crowd, and Ben was tempted to duck down in his seat.
Maybe there was someone else who was an obvious shoo-in for that position, but he knew he didn't want it.
He had enough on his plate, and if he were being perfectly honest, Mason was the one who was most likely to cause any disruptions to the festival.
He would do a better job of keeping an eye on Mason if he wasn't completely consumed with keeping everyone else safe.
"You should volunteer for that, honey," his mother said, leaning over and speaking into his ear while she tapped his leg with her hand.
"I have too many other things going on," he murmured back, although he knew he’d take the position if the town needed him to.
Noah continued speaking, saying that they were also going to have a director of music, and if no one else was interested, he would head up that committee.
No one else raised their hand, and Noah declared that that had been decided.
Unfortunately, no one else volunteered for any of the other positions, and soon Noah was calling names out of the crowd.
"Dr. Terry, I would volunteer you for the medical director. I know you’d do a great job. But I know that that's about the time your baby is due."
"It is. Although I'd love to do it. Maybe Dr. Hannah?" Terry said, looking back to where Dr. Hannah sat just in front of Ben.
Ben almost smiled as Hannah squirmed in her seat, almost as though she too were interested in ducking down out of sight. Sitting in the back the way she was, she obviously hadn't come expecting to be volunteered for anything.
"I could do that," she said, her voice sounding stronger and more confident than her position would've made Ben guess it would.
"That's great," Noah wrote down her name on the paper that was in front of him.
"We'd like to have a tent set up where people can go if they have heat exhaustion, fatigue, and any kind of minor injuries, and have it stocked with first aid supplies.
If you don't mind staying afterwards a little bit, I have a list of things that I was hoping you could include, and we'll go over that, along with all of the other heads of committees.
" He took a breath. "And if you'd like to have anyone serving alongside of you as a help, we'll talk about that then.
And... you can either ask someone, or we'll have another meeting where we ask for volunteers. "
Dr. Hannah nodded her head, and Cassie giggled and said something in her ear. It made Hannah smile as she looked at Cassie, and almost as though she could feel Ben's eyes on her, she looked around just a little more, and her eyes met his for just a second.
In that second, time seemed to slow down, and it felt like something passed between them. He wasn't even sure what. But it seemed strange, although not unpleasant.
And then it was over. Just like that. She turned back, and he ripped his eyes away, focusing instead on Noah, who stood at the front.
Although it took a few moments until he heard what Noah was saying, and his mom poked him in the ribs.
"Volunteer!" she hissed.
He wasn't even sure what she wanted him to volunteer for, so he kept his hand firmly down and stared at the podium, avoiding eye contact and hoping he could figure out from context what in the world was going on.
What had that been between Dr. Hannah and him? Had he been the only one to feel it?
He had to have been, and he tried to push it aside. He wasn't one for hocus-pocus feelings. He'd gone down that road once, swept away by youthful passions, and had married hastily. He certainly wasn't going to do that again.
"My son, Ben, is a perfect person for that, and I nominate him." His mother stood up and spoke, and he remembered just in time to keep his mouth closed, since it wanted to drop open in shock.
What had she volunteered him for?
Just as that thought went through his head, he realized that the seat beside his mother was empty.
Where was Mason?
"Ben? Is that okay with you?" Noah asked, and then after a small pause, he said, "Although if your mother says you should do it, I think you gotta listen to her." Laughter rippled throughout the crowd.
Ben grinned and tried to keep the concern off of his face. Where had his son gone?
"I'm definitely going to listen to her. What is that commandment about obeying your parents?" He huffed out a breath. "I don't think there's an end date on that."
He didn't think a grown adult was supposed to obey his parents, but they were definitely supposed to honor them. That was what the commandment said.
Still, following his comment, the crowd laughed again.
"All right then. You'll be co-chairs with Dr. Hannah on the combined committee of health and safety, as I just explained. Both of your committees are new, and we have no precedent."
Noah seemed to stare at him across the crowd. "You and Dr. Hannah know each other, correct?"
"Yes. We've met," Ben said immediately, to try to head off any weird introductions that would make everyone uncomfortable.
"All right. I'll need you up here at the front at the end of the meeting as well. We'll discuss whether or not you need any extra assistance and what that might look like."
Ben figured there were probably other things involved, such as what the budget was going to be and whether there even was one.
He wanted to sarcastically thank his mother, but honestly, he was happy to help out with his hometown.
After being in the city for so long, he was grateful to be back and definitely wanted to do his part to keep things moving.
He knew small towns didn't thrive on their own.
It took people willing to head up committees and do a lot of work behind the scenes in order to bring in visitors and tourist dollars to keep the downtown businesses thriving and to keep the town bustling and healthy.
Without those people, the town would die.
Noah had started talking about something else when two things happened simultaneously. The first was that Ben remembered that Mason had disappeared. The second was the fire alarm went off.
"Is there a fire?" some woman said from near the front of the building.
After that, pandemonium broke out as a third of the crowd jumped up and tried to run for the door. There were too many people in the large community room for that many people to be able to make a break for the door. Several people got shoved aside, and it seemed like chaos for a while.
Ben noticed a lady to his left get knocked down, and whoever ran into her didn't even seem to notice as they continued to rush to the door.
As Ben stood, looking to see where the fire was, he noticed that Dr. Hannah had knelt down beside the lady while Cassie stood in front of her, blocking people from stepping on her.
Seeing that was taken care of, Ben continued to scan to see where the fire was. But he didn't even see smoke. Or smell it.
And then he noticed his son standing over by the fire alarm, a smirky grin on his face.
His heart sank. He should've known Mason would do something to retaliate for being forced to come. After Mason had been unable to provide any kind of solid alibi for that morning when he had asked whether or not he had vandalized the gazebo, Ben had felt like it was best to not leave his son alone.
The gazebo had been vandalized sometime between when Ben left the house and within an hour after he arrived on duty at the sheriff's office.
"It was a false alarm!" he called out in his loudest voice, even as he started to move through the crowd to reach his son.
Mason wasn't even trying to run, and Ben knew he would have to take his son in and file misdemeanor charges on him.
"I can handle this," Gordon said from beside him, glancing at Mason before looking back at Ben.
Ben knew that he should excuse himself, since he was too invested and would have a conflict of interest. After all, he didn't want his son to have this on his record, but there was no getting around it.
"I appreciate it," he said.
Gordon jerked his head and walked over to Mason, where they spoke quietly, before Gordon grabbed a hold of Mason's arm and led him outside.
In the meantime, Noah had regained control of the crowd again, and people had started making their way back to their seats.
Ben walked to the back room and stood against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, and fought the urge to leave and go somewhere where he could hide.
It was embarrassing to have his son create chaos.
Although in all of the excitement, he wasn't sure if anyone had actually seen that it was his son who'd caused the problem.
He owed Gordon for getting him out so quickly.
But he definitely couldn't expect anyone to keep this under their hat. The whole town was going to know. And if they were able to figure out for sure if Mason had been the one to deface the gazebo, that would be added to his list of sins.
"Sorry about the interruption, but I think we’re done anyway. Thank you all. Sorry about the inconvenience," Noah said as he tapped the gavel and set the hammer down.
Ben glanced over to where his mother had been sitting. She was back in her place and seemed like she was just fine. At least she hadn't gone running for the door, and Ben had made sure she was okay before he'd walked away from her.
While he was looking that direction, his eyes caught on Dr. Hannah, who was also back at her seat, although the lady who had fallen was now sitting beside her. She appeared shaken but okay.
"If I said that you needed to meet with me after the meeting, please come to the front," Noah reminded everyone.
Ben gritted his teeth. He wasn't going to have any choice but to go up and do his duty, even though his heart was with his son and his mind was working on the problem of what to do.
He really had no idea. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this.
He felt totally inadequate to be a father, but it wasn't like it was a job he could quit.
He had no choice but to continue on, no matter how terrible he thought he was doing.
With that thought in mind, he pushed off the wall and started toward the front.