10. Grant
Grant
The Chamber of Commerce meets on the last Thursday of the month in the middle school library.
It’s empty in the evenings and centrally located, so it works for all our members.
The janitor lets me in and turns on the lights.
I brush my hand over old favorite books as I pass—Hatchet, Ranger’s Apprentice, The Lightning Thief.
I make a pot of coffee in the librarian’s alcove in the back, and pour some into my travel mug.
I sip it while I wait for the others to arrive.
I’m always first. Lia calls it oldest child syndrome.
I call it looking out for my people. Rumor has it that Ted Ender plans on crashing today’s meeting and I want to see him coming, so I take the chair facing the door, keeping a sharp eye on it.
Lia marches to the table and starts unpacking her briefcase full of notes. Dove Jackson comes in with Michelle Turner, who’s chatting about an expensive wool coat that came into The Restyle Room. Dove sets a bakery box in the middle of the table.
Oscar Point arrives with a paperback for Michelle and a reminder about book club. He takes off his coat and flicks his long, black braids over his shoulder. They fall forward again as he opens the bakery box to help himself to a cookie.
Lia hands out minutes from our last meeting. “Shall we get started?”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Hugo?” I ask. My cousin is the sixth member of our chamber.
“He’s always late. At this rate, we’ll be waiting until spring.”
“I’m here, I’m here.” Hugo trundles in and detours for coffee before throwing his bulk into the last chair.
Lia clears her throat the way lawyers do when they’re about to ruin your evening. “Let’s start with updates. We’ve got budgets, visitor numbers, and some new guidance from the county about trail permits.”
Hugo groans as he shrugs himself out of his coat. “If I have to hear the word permit one more time, I’m building an unlicensed hotel on principle.”
“You already own a hotel,” Oscar says. “Unless you’re planning on The Frostline: Underground Edition.”
That gets a snort out of Michelle. She’s halfway through arranging Dove’s cookies on a paper plate. “You could rent rooms by the hour to wives whose husbands are out ice fishing.”
“Michelle,” Dove scolds gently, but she’s laughing, too. “Eat a cookie. I brought those pecan ones you like.”
Lia taps her pen on her notebook. “Can we please stay on task?”
We go through updates. Business is slow, as expected in January, but there are a few bright spots.
We’ve got reports from two snowmobile rental outfits that they’re doing better than last year, and the tour companies report that their winter numbers are steady.
Between a decent amount of snow and the new ads we’ve been trying, the town’s in decent shape.
Hugo’s planning Valentine’s weekend specials at The Frostline, complete with welcome bags from local businesses. He asks me about coupons for The Break.
I shrug. “Sure, if the new landlord doesn’t put me out of business by then.”
“What’s her problem?” Hugo asks.
“She doesn’t like the noise.”
“Nobody likes the noise,” Oscar points out. “That’s why you’re on the far edge of town.”
“Someone tell Annabelle that,” I mumble into my coffee.
“She’s lovely, isn’t she?” Dove says. Dove and Lia coo over her while Oscar looks on in confusion and Hugo silently sips his coffee. “She’s so sweet,” Dove says. “And so pretty.”
“She’s stunning.” Lia bumps me with her elbow. “Grant thinks so too. Don’t you, big guy?”
I’m saved from answering by the door banging open and Ted Ender walking in, tracking slush and smugness as he strides over to our table. “Evening, everyone,” he says. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”
“You are,” Lia says flatly, already closing her notebook halfway.
“Since you meet in public, I thought you wouldn’t mind a little public perspective.” Ender unbuttons his overcoat, revealing a tailored suit that doesn’t belong anywhere near Echo Creek. The man is all slick hair, tight tie, and white teeth. He looks like other people’s money.
Ender surveys the table as if we’re going to scooch our chairs over to accommodate him. Nobody moves. “Is that coffee I smell?” he asks. “Point me to the pot.”
I give him a blank stare over my mug. Hugo places a hand over his, as if Ender is going to poison it. Lia shakes her head.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Ender follows his nose to the alcove and fusses around with cream and sugar.
Lia leans forward to whisper, “We can kick him out, right? He’s not a member of the chamber.”
“On what basis?” I ask. “As long as he’s not disruptive, I don’t see how we can.”
Dove snorts. “His aftershave’s disruptive.”
“He smells expensive,” Michelle says.
Oscar nods. “He smells like pricing locals out of the market.”
Ender returns with coffee in hand. He pulls an empty chair from another table and sits outside our circle, looking like the least popular girl in school.
My colleagues are too Midwestern nice to take him on, so it’s up to me. I lock eyes with him. “Why are you here, Ender?”
He blows on his coffee. “I thought I’d offer an outsider’s opinion on the future of your town. You’re too close to it, so you don’t see it.”
“You mean the future where you bulldoze Cedar Street for a Taco Bell?”
“Nobody’s suggesting bulldozing. Where do you get these ideas?”
Where, indeed? Maybe from his own mouth, as he toadies up to Mayor Stenhower and tries to do an end-run around the city council.
Ender pitches his voice like he’s talking to children. “Small businesses can’t carry a town forever. Not when people are leaving, and when your tourist numbers are down by—”
“That’s temporary,” Oscar bites out. “Seasonal fluctuations. Everyone up here deals with it.”
“I’m dealing with it too,” Ender complains. “Your stubbornness hurts all of us. Income from my Airbnb listings isn’t where it should be, and at this rate—”
“That’s not our concern,” Hugo cuts in.
I set my coffee down, working very hard not to slam it on the table. “We’re not against growth. We just don’t want to sell out to get there.”
“I understand. I really do.” Ender almost sounds sincere. “Keeping the big players out makes you feel so moral. So righteous. It’ll work in the short term. But in the long term, allowing growth of new businesses might keep your kids from moving away.”
The table goes quiet. Even the heater seems to stop humming.
Lia grips her pen like she wants to stab him with it. “Mr. Ender, the—”
“Ted, please.”
“Mr. Ender,” Lia says again. “The chamber has discussed your proposals before. We’re not interested.”
“If you want travelers to stop instead of just pass through, you need to give them all the comforts of home. You need Starbucks in the morning and pizza late at night.”
“People don’t come here to drink Starbucks,” I say. “They come here because we don’t have one.”
Oscar chuckles under his breath. “There’s your town motto.”
Ender aims a sharp gaze at me. “That kind of thinking keeps places like this small.”
“Small’s the point,” Hugo says, his voice a low rumble. “We like knowing who we’re doing business with.”
“Tourists like that too,” Michelle adds quickly. “They like the charm. We’re a hidden gem.”
“Charm doesn’t keep the lights on.” Ender smirks, but there’s an undertone of annoyance with it. He’s clearly used to winning rooms like this with ease. Not here. He gives me a condescending little nod. “I hear your brothers are trying to turn that played-out iron mine into a park.”
The air tightens as everyone turns to me.
Dylan, my brother-in-law, is handling the surveyors and contractors, ready to clear out the old mining access roads once the snow melts.
Meanwhile, Felix will talk about bike trails and hiking loops to anyone who will listen, constantly comparing our plans to the Redhead Mountain Bike Park in Minnesota.
The problem is Cole. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s funding most of it. My youngest brother has a weird mix of civic pride and hatred of the spotlight. So we all pretend this project belongs to Echo Creek, even though there’s no way a town our size could do this with our own tax base.
“It’s a nice idea,” Ender says. “But parks don’t build an economy.”
“They build a community,” I tell him with barely controlled fury. “Big difference.”
Ender scoffs. “Do you seriously think a few bicycles will tip the economic scales in your favor?”
“You might be surprised.”
Ender and I stare at each other across the table. He blinks first. He stands and buttons his coat. “I’m never surprised,” he says. “Frequently disappointed, but never surprised.”
His leather shoes squeak across the floor as he walks out. His absence is louder than his presence as his argument lingers in the air. Stability. Long-term solutions. But at what cost?
Hugo exhales. “If I ever act like that man, please drown me in the lake.”
Michelle rubs her temples. “He’s not wrong about everything. We could use more business.”
I’m still thinking about the park project, and if my brothers can pull it off. My body churns with a mix of pride and pressure. My brothers go out and build visible projects with big ideas behind them. Me? I’m here making sure the town doesn’t collapse under the weight of expectations.
“Or maybe we just need better tourists,” Dove says.
That gets a laugh from Hugo. “Put that in your next ad.”
“Echo Creek: Home of Better Tourists,” Oscar says. “Catchy.”
Silence again. It’s heavier, but not hostile. Just real. The way conversations get when you stop pretending everything’s fine.
“This park project,” Lia says, tension leaking into her voice. “It’s going to work, right?”
“It has to,” I say. “The alternative is letting people like Ender decide what Echo Creek is.”
We finish our agenda, and the meeting breaks up the way it always does. Chairs scrape. Oscar offers to take the rest of the cookies off Dove’s hands. I clean the coffeepot. The janitor locks the doors behind us.
Outside, the cold hits hard enough to sting my lungs.
I pull my collar higher. There’s pride in this place.
The kind that makes people buy from their neighbors instead of online, and tell commercial developers to shove it.
But there’s fear too, the kind that smells like debt and winter and maybe-not-enough.
If I could rage this problem into submission, I would. But Echo Creek doesn’t need someone to break things. It needs someone to fix them.