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It was one o’clock, which meant that it was time for Eli to make his standard Wednesday afternoon rounds. He usually began at the south side of town, where the Donnelly family had been raising chickens for three generations, and made his way to the north side and the Christmas tree farm, with several stops along the way. Checking in with neighbors. Heading off disputes before they could become a crisis. That was what he should do.
Instead, he was rooted to the sidewalk, wondering what it was about seeing Emma swoop her pale hair off her neck and twist it into a tidy bun with smooth, efficient motions that made it difficult to breathe.
“Ugh,” she muttered. “When will this heat wave end?”
“I hear temperatures might go down to the sixties,” he said before he could stop himself. It was a mistake. They didn’t joke. They didn’t tease. They weren’t friends.
She spun around on her toes. “When?” she demanded.
He grinned. “October.”
From her half-groan, half-laugh, she had forgotten, too. But not for long. He saw the instant she remembered. Her lips flattened and the light in her eyes turned cold.
“So,” she said. “I’ll see you Saturday. For the walk-through.”
“Right. Saturday.”
She gave a crisp nod and took a step toward her truck...and then stopped. Her head tilted. He watched, fascinated, as she slowly circled the lamp post.
“Dammit,” she muttered, making the most adorably grumpy face he had ever seen.
“What?” he asked. He looked from Emma to the lamp post and back again. “What’s happening?”
“The lamp post is in terrible shape, that’s what’s happening,” she said, looking like it was a personal affront to her. “They’re all in terrible shape.”
He took a good, long look. She wasn’t wrong. The paint was chipped and peeling pretty badly. He shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, they’re what? A hundred years old? Of course they look bad.”
“They would look better with a new coat of paint.” She tilted her head back, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, as she studied the top of the pole. “See those curved hooks? It looks like they were meant to hold something. Maybe flower baskets? That would probably look nice.” She was visibly annoyed by the idea. “Dammit!”
“What’s wrong with flower baskets?” he wanted to know.
“Because now I have to figure out how I’m going to do that. So I can leave Hart’s Ridge better than I found it.”
His heart stopped. A physical impossibility, maybe, but it was the only way to explain the sudden halt of blood flow to his brain, making him light-headed. “You’re leaving Hart’s Ridge?”
“No.” She frowned. “It’s an expression. Leave it better than you found it. It’s—” She turned away abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.
He remembered suddenly, with a flash of nostalgia that punched him in the gut. A picnic by the river that ran down Hart Mountain. How old were they then? Ten? Eleven? The empty beer cans littering the riverbank hadn’t been theirs, but Mrs. Andrews had insisted they pack them up anyway to throw away at home. Leave it better than you found it.
“It’s what your mom always told us,” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Okay, then. So the lamp posts. Fixing them up, that will be your contribution as mayor? To leave it better than you found it?”
“Well, what else am I going to do? I can’t stop the processing plant from closing. I can’t do some math magic that fixes the deficit without raising taxes. I’m not...” She made a noise of frustration. “I’m not smart. Not the kind of smart a person should be, if a person is mayor. I got B’s and a few C’s from elementary school up through high school, and failed out of community college. You know that.”
“Stop it,” he said, more sharply than he intended. He hated it when she put herself down like that. It didn’t happen often. Emma was pretty confident in herself, for the most part. But this had always been a sore spot with her. She had never been a great student, despite the fact that both her parents were teachers.
In ninth grade, they had subjected her to all kinds of testing, trying to figure out what the problem was. He had hated that, watching her hope fade each time another test came back negative. No ADD, no ADHD, no dyslexia. No explanation at all. Generally speaking, Eli liked Emma’s parents, but in those moments he had wanted to shake them. What was wrong with B’s, anyway?
“There are lots of different kinds of smart,” he said now, and meant it.
Her wry smile made his heart twist in his chest. “Ever noticed how people only say that to people like me? No one ever says that to straight-A students.”
“You’re smart.”
“Not the right kind of smart, the kind who’s a whiz with numbers. That’s the kind of smart Hart’s Ridge needs right now. I can’t do that, but this, I can do. I can paint a lamp post.” A look of doubt crossed her face. “I think so, anyway.”
Eli didn’t say anything to that. Not because he had any doubts himself in her ability to paint a lamp post. He didn’t have a single one. He had known her since the first day of preschool, and not once had Emma Andrews had an idea that she failed to follow through on.
No, he stayed quiet because Emma always did her best thinking out loud, and he didn’t want to miss a word of it.
“Cost isn’t a problem, if I’m providing the free labor,” she muttered, more to herself than him. “The town maintenance fund can cover a few gallons of paint.”
She scratched a fingernail against the surface, chipping off little bits of paint, and frowned. “I’ll have to sand off this old, rusted stuff first. Oh my God, that’s going to suck. I wonder what kind of paint works on cast iron? I’ll have to ask Noah at the hardware store. Or the internet. The internet knows everything.”
He nodded in agreement, though he doubted she noticed. She was in her own world now, where he didn’t exist.
“Twenty lamp posts, seven feet tall... I think I have a ladder that could work...maybe. Hm.” She stepped back, hands on her hips, and looked the lamp post up and down. “Boost me up.”
He blinked. “Say that again?”
“Boost me up.” She waved impatiently, motioning him closer. “The top of my ladder reaches about to your waist, maybe a little higher. I want to see if I can reach the top of the lamp post from there.”
He wasn’t about to protest. She was going to touch him, willingly, and he didn’t care that the touching would only consist of being stepped on. He’d let her walk all over him, if that was what she wanted to do.
He dutifully shifted himself between her and the lamp post, laced his hands together, and crouched down. “Okay, then. Come on.”
She took hold of his shoulders for balance and stepped onto his waiting hands.
“Hang on tight,” he said. “I’m going to stand. You ready?”
“I—” Her voice came out raspy. She cleared her throat. “Yes. I’m ready.”
He tried not to let that bother him, that she was clearly nervous. “Don’t be scared. I’m not going to drop you. Hold tight to me, okay?”
She didn’t answer, but her fingers dug into his shoulders. He stood slowly, so damn slowly, her body sliding against his as she moved with him. Fully straightened, her feet were braced at his waist, and his eyes were level with the waistband of her jeans.
“Oh,” she said cheerfully. “This is good. This is perfect.”
Perfect? He tried not to groan. It was torture. She smelled so good. So...edible. Literally edible. Like tortillas and peppers and spices. His last girlfriend had worn some kind of floral perfume that made him sneeze. Emma’s scent didn’t make him sneeze. It made him hungry. For burritos...and other things.
“I don’t even have to stretch to reach the top.” She lifted her arms.
He could tell she lifted her arms because her T-shirt came up, revealing a strip of soft, pale stomach and the most lickable belly button he had ever seen. He didn’t consider belly buttons lickable, as a rule, but hers was. He wanted to delve his tongue in that shallow indentation, swirl, and then move farther south. Yes.
No. The thought of putting his mouth there, at the juncture of her thighs, made his insides weaken, and he couldn’t afford to weaken with Emma literally depending on him to stay strong. He gritted his teeth.
“You almost done using me as a stepladder?” he asked, torn between hoping and dreading her answer was yes. He didn’t want to stop holding her, but he didn’t know how much he could take before he gave in to temptation and licked her navel.
“Right. Sorry.” She gave him a soft pat on the head, like he was a dog or something. “You can put me down now. Wait. You know what? I’ll just jump.” Without waiting for his reply, she pushed off from his shoulders and hopped down. “Thanks.”
“Yeah.” He looked at the marks from her shoes crisscrossing his palms. It hadn’t hurt, but then again, he hadn’t really been paying attention to how his hands felt. He had been much more focused on the mere inch of air that had separated her skin from his mouth. “No problem.”
She looked at him, then quickly looked away again like she was embarrassed. Her mouth opened and closed but no words came out. Finally, she shook her head, an answer to a question he hadn’t yet asked.
“What?” he said.
She pushed back a lock of hair that had escaped the bun and tucked it behind her ear. “I keep forgetting I’m mad at you.”
He stopped breathing. He took an unconscious step toward her, hoping.
It was the wrong move.
She backed up, keeping the distance between them. “But I am mad at you. I’ll always be mad. It doesn’t matter how nice you are, how familiar it feels to be near you, how—it doesn’t matter. None of it. Nothing can change that you arrested my dad. He didn’t even have a chance.”
He let out the breath he had been holding, long and slow. “I know. It isn’t fair. You’re right to be mad.”
She frowned, her eyebrows pushed together in a straight line. “Stop being reasonable about it. You can’t make me change my mind. We can’t be friends again.”
“I’m not trying to change your mind.” He knew better than that. No one ever changed their mind, not when it came to him. His mom had loved him—so she had said—but he hadn’t been able to talk her into staying with him, either. Emma was no different. Forgiveness, unconditional love...that was for other people, if it existed at all. Not for him.
“No. No, I guess not.” There was a note of resignation in her voice that he didn’t understand. Wasn’t this what she wanted?
He couldn’t ask her, because she was already turning away, getting into her truck, slamming the door behind her with a finality that reverberated in his soul.
It wasn’t lost on him that someone else was always doing the leaving.
He was the one left behind.
***
Eli was nearly at North Star Farm when he got the call.
“We got the Naloxone in,” Chrissy Davis said. “You want to swing by the clinic and get it?”
“I’ll be there in twenty,” he said, already making the U-turn. Finally.
Eight years ago, Eli would have said the biggest part of his job was handling disturbances, usually due to meth, and usually ending in an arrest. Now, the biggest part of his job was still disturbances, usually due to opioids, possibly ending in a night at the Hart’s Ridge Free Health Clinic, but usually recuperating at home. He had Chrissy to thank for that.
The Health Clinic was one of the best things that had happened to Hart’s Ridge, but it came at a price. Hart’s Ridge had to make a choice: It could expand the two-bed jail to thirty beds, with a corresponding increase in police officers, or it could build a health clinic. It couldn’t afford both. Hart’s Ridge, in Eli’s opinion, made the right choice, but it meant that technically, the Hart’s Ridge Police Department no longer existed. Eli was an officer for the Colby County Department, contracted to Hart’s Ridge along with two part-time officers.
The change in employer hadn’t changed his job much at all, though. Except he made fewer arrests. It turned out he was much less likely to arrest a person for a non-violent crime when he didn’t have a place to keep them.
Twenty minutes later he pulled into the parking lot. Chrissy was outside waiting for him with a big box and a clipboard.
“Hey, there,” he said. “What have we got?”
“Twenty kits total. Fifteen of the nasal sprays, five of the injections.” She gave him an apologetic look. “I know you said people are kind of squeamish about using the needles, but that was the best we could do.”
“No worries. I’ll take what I can get.”
“Great. I’ll need your signature here.” She handed him the clipboard.
“Sure thing.” He signed his name with a flourish, handed it back to her, and scooped up the box. “Thanks again, Chrissy.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to thank me. You know we wouldn’t be here without you.”
“You would have found a way.” He believed that. Chrissy put her heart and soul into the health center.
After dropping the box in the passenger seat, he gave her a wave. He couldn’t stand around all afternoon talking when he had deliveries to make.
An hour later he was down seven kits. That was enough, for now. It would be six months before Chrissy ordered another box, so this would have to last.
He turned down Main Street for one last check. His shift was over, but that didn’t mean much since he was always on call. He slowed down, noticing a half-dozen men had congregated outside the credit union. It was probably nothing—he recognized them all as fairly staid community members—but he was curious, all the same. He pulled over and rolled down the window.
“What’s going on?”
Mr. Elwood, the manager of the credit union, leaned down and peered in the window. “That’s a good question, officer, and the truth is, we don’t actually know.”
“Sure, we do,” another voice protested. “Emma Andrews has lost her mind, that’s what’s going on.”
He was out of the car in a flash. “What do you mean?”
“See for yourself.” Mr. Elwood jerked his head to indicate across the street. “She’s scrubbing the damn lamp post. Been doing that all afternoon, in fact, starting at the south end of the street. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s lost her mind, but it is peculiar.”
Eli watched as Emma positioned the ladder and climbed up. Steadying herself with one hand braced on the post, she scrubbed hard with a wire brush. After a minute, she paused. Her head rolled in a tired circle and she rubbed the spot where her neck met her shoulder. Then she scrubbed some more.
“Is that what she thinks mayors do? Scrub lamp posts?” someone said, hooting with laughter. “Poor girl is in over her head.”
Eli felt a rush of annoyance. “She’s not just scrubbing them. She’s sanding them. Getting them ready for painting. Then maybe hang some flower baskets. Make them look nice.”
“Flower baskets, hey?” Mr. Elwood crossed his arms over his expansive stomach and rocked back on his heels, considering. “I like that. They haven’t looked like that since I was a boy.” Since Mr. Elwood was closing in on eighty, that would have been a good seventy years ago.
“Sure, you like it,” said Jacob Bronson, who owned the only car dealership in town—among other businesses. “People like pretty things. But there’s more to mayor than making a town pretty, and I don’t see how Emma Andrews is up to the job. Hart’s Ridge is in trouble. You think that little girl right there, scrubbing the damn lamp post, is going to get us out of it? No. One of us has to step up.”
“One of us.” Mr. Elwood snorted. “You mean you.”
“No, I don’t. You think I have time to be mayor? I have businesses to run. No, I mean this town’s finest police officer, who just so happens to also be our newly appointed deputy mayor.” Bronson clapped Eli on the shoulder. “I mean Eli Carter. He’s our man.”
Our man. Eli narrowed his eyes. He knew Bronson well enough to know that he meant those words literally. Bronson had no use for a police officer in his pocket, as he preferred to do his business legally, but he would love to have a mayor who owed him favors to make sure those legalities were smoothed away.
Unfortunately for Mr. Bronson, he was mistaken on two counts.
Number one, Eli couldn’t be bought and paid for. Eli wasn’t his man. He wasn’t anyone’s man.
Number two, this town needed a mayor with the creativity and tenacity to fix a problem that had sounded the death knell for other small towns throughout the entire country. This town needed a mayor who believed in leaving things better than she found them. This town needed a mayor who got off her ass and actually did something, even if it was only making lamp posts pretty again, while everyone else wasted time arguing about what should be done.
This town needed Emma Andrews.
The trouble was, Emma Andrews did not want to be mayor. So she said. Except there she was, painting streetlights. Because the streetlights were a problem, and she liked to fix problems. That was the truth about Emma, though she would likely never admit it: She liked to solve problems. And what was being mayor all about, if not solving problems? Damn shame she didn’t think she wanted the job.
But then, Emma never wanted anything she didn’t have to fight for.
What was it she had told him? She didn’t know what to do with herself when things were going right. She needed things to go wrong. She needed an enemy to destroy. And in her mind, there was no bigger enemy than Eli Carter, the man who put her father in jail.
“What do you say, Eli?” Bronson asked. “You want to be mayor? Make this town great again?”
Eli tore his gaze from Emma. “I’m in.”
Emma Andrews needed a fight, and he was going to give it to her.