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Everything hurt.
Emma groaned as she rolled out of bed, her muscles aching in protest. She had spent the better part of yesterday scrubbing the lamp posts with a wire brush and smoothing away the old paint. And she wasn’t done yet. Ten down, ten more to go.
Despite the pain in her back and shoulders, she was up before the sun. She still had a business to run, one that couldn’t be put on pause just because she now had the additional (unpaid!) labor of being mayor. Today, though, would be different. She and Cesar couldn’t stand around with nothing to do and no one to feed; they had bills to pay. If the customers weren’t going to come to them, then they would go to the customers. Which was why they were driving an hour to the SuperMart a little ways past Asheville, where they would set up in the parking lot.
Cesar would be there any minute, so she hustled through her morning routine of brushing her teeth, throwing on clean but wrinkled clothes from the top of pile of laundry she hadn’t had time to put away yet, and twisting her hair into a bun. She didn’t have time to whip up an elaborate breakfast, and anyway Cesar was right. She couldn’t really cook. Burritos were always an option, but not an appealing one since she would be making them all day and probably eat one for lunch.
She set a pot of coffee to brewing and sat down with a bowl of cereal just as Cesar walked in without knocking. He never knocked, not since eight years ago when he had knocked every day for a week, and every day for a week she had ignored him. He had finally let himself in anyway, since she rarely locked the door, and found her on the floor, staring at the fan.
Anyone else would have given up, but Cesar was her surrogate grandfather. His daughter, Helen, had been best friends with Emma’s mom growing up. It was a lifelong friendship, only ending when her mom died. Helen had tried to help Emma after she passed, but somehow it had been too painful for both of them. With Cesar it was different. She hadn’t spent as much time with him as she had with Helen, so the memories associated with her mom were fewer. At the time, she needed fewer memories.
“I hitched up the Airstream to your truck.” He helped himself to her coffee, filling his travel mug and adding a spoonful of sugar.
“Thanks.”
Her Yukon Denali was more than a decade old, but it could haul almost about anything. So long as she made wide turns and didn’t push too hard on the gas, she mostly forgot the Airstream was there at all—until it was time to park. Luckily, that wouldn’t be an issue where they were going. There would be plenty of space in the back of the parking lot.
Fifteen minutes later they were on the road, heading north. The sun was just rising, streaking the sky with pink and gold. Emma caught her breath. It didn’t matter that she had seen thousands of sunrises exactly like it. The beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains never got old.
The streetlights along the highway flicked off as the sky grew brighter. Streetlights were not something she spent a lot of time considering, but now that she was so intimately acquainted with the lamps on Main Street, she noticed how ugly these were in comparison. Big and gray, with none of the delicate, intricate ironwork. None of the charm.
“Did you know that the streetlights on Main Street are a hundred years old?” she said. “Noah at the hardware store told me. He said they were gas until about thirty years ago. Apparently the pipes were leaking, gas was getting under the ground and killing trees.”
Cesar grunted. She took that to mean that, while he was not per se interested, it would be too much effort to shut her up.
“There’s a company in Germany that makes replacements that convert gas to electric. They customize it so they use the same base mounting as the gas mounts. And then they use special light bulbs that mimic the tone of gaslight. Isn’t that cool?”
Cesar grunted again.
“It was apparently a big deal at the time. Do you remember it?” She paused, giving him time to respond, but he just grunted again. “Hart’s Ridge got a grant from the National Park Service. There’s a Historic Preservation Fund that can pay for this sort of thing. I’m going to apply and see if I can get them to cover the buckets of paint I bought.”
At the mention of money, Cesar perked up. “Get your labor covered, too.”
Emma frowned. “That seems wrong, somehow. I’m mayor. I can’t hire myself to do a job.”
“Hart’s Ridge isn’t paying you for it. The Park Service is. You’re not in a position to turn down money right now, especially not hard-earned money. You’re doing the work, and I don’t see anyone else who was stepping in. Get your labor covered.”
“We’ll see,” she said noncommittally.
Cesar was right, she wasn’t in a position to turn down money. She had some savings, but if she didn’t start selling more burritos soon, those savings would be gone in three months. Getting paid for the hours she spent toiling on the streetlights would be a blessing. On the other hand, it might not be legal. The mayor didn’t even get a salary. Maybe she couldn’t be paid for odd jobs and services, either.
Emma sighed. It was only her second day as (acting) mayor, and she was already in over her head. How was she going to pull this off? It was like being tossed into a live video game and not knowing what the rules were.
Two months. That’s all she had to do this for, was two months. If she did a good job, great. If she messed a few things up here and there, that would be fine too. City Council had set the special election for July 5. Whatever she screwed up between now and then, the new mayor would fix everything. She didn’t know who that would be, but it didn’t matter.
It wouldn’t be her.
***
By the time they rolled back into town, Emma was exhausted down to her bones. There wasn’t a single part of her that wasn’t demoralized, from her greasy hair to her throbbing feet.
The day had been a success, if success meant earning a tidy profit that more than covered their expenses, including gas and wages. For the first time in a month, the tightness in her chest eased somewhat. She wasn’t going to lose the house—not yet, anyway. She could still pay Cesar’s wages. So yes, the tightness in her chest had eased.
But everything else ached. What didn’t ache physically ached existentially. Those were worst of all. Emma hated existential aches.
They had sold out at SuperMart. That was good. But it had taken them all day to do it, and that was bad. The sun had been rising when they left this morning, and now it was setting. Worse, they had spent three hours driving. What had been an easy hour-long commute this morning had turned into a two-hour slog through traffic on the return home.
Was this going to be her life? Burritos from sunup to sundown, and three hours in traffic? The thought of it made her stomach curdle with dread.
It wasn’t that Emma was opposed to hard work. The Airstream was open seven days a week, after all, and she worked all seven of them. It wasn’t the same, though. For one thing, the Airstream closed at three, which meant she was done by four. That left plenty of time to get a happy hour drink with Kate and Suzie—which, more often than not these days, consisted of club soda for Suzie as she was either pregnant or nursing—or to binge a television show if she wanted. She might not always have time to fold laundry, but her house was neat and tidy, just the way she liked it.
For another, she didn’t spend three hours driving. Her commute was a ten-minute walk from her front yard to the house, fifteen if she had to drive from the church or another location in Hart’s Ridge. Sitting in a never-ending stream of cars full of irritated, aggressive drivers was soul crushing.
Most importantly, she knew every single one of her customers in Hart’s Ridge. She saw the same people day in and day out. Even the workers who commuted from outside Hart’s Ridge were still the same every day. She knew their lives, their families, and how they liked their coffee. She liked hearing the gossip. She liked seeing familiar faces. It made her work mean something more than just a paycheck.
Tomorrow they would be changing locations to Colby County Community College. It was fifteen minutes closer, and far enough from Asheville that they might avoid traffic. Usually a college campus would be a safe bet for making sales. However, it was also summer, which meant the campus wouldn’t be as populated as it was in fall and spring. It was a gamble, but maybe it would pay off.
Right now, she was so tired she didn’t want to think about it anymore. She didn’t want to think about the streetlights, either, and how she was going to get them sanded and painted when all her daylight hours were devoted to burritos. She didn’t want to think about how Kate and Suzie had probably had a great time at happy hour without her. She didn’t want to think about why Eli’s face was on a gigantic poster with Vote for Law and Order in big black letters.
Wait, what?
She hit the brakes and came to a stop there in the middle of the street, not bothering to pull over. She stared out the window, rubbed her eyes, then looked again. No, she wasn’t hallucinating. Vote for Law and Order, then his serious, unsmiling face, followed by Vote Eli Carter for Mayor.
What. The. Hell.
***
“Oh, so we’re doing this again,” Suzie said, looking down at Emma. “Well, I’m not getting down there with you this time. I’ve gained a thousand pounds since yesterday, all in my stomach.”
Emma kept her eyes on the ceiling fan’s slow, lazy circles. “I didn’t ask you to.”
The floorboards vibrated beneath her as her friends plopped themselves down on the couch. “I take it she heard the news?” Kate asked.
“We saw the posters driving back into town,” Cesar said. “She screamed a bit, and now here we are.”
“Emma, honey, this isn’t the end of the world,” Kate cajoled. “Maybe it’s even a good thing. You don’t want to be mayor, right? Now you won’t have to be. Obviously we hate him, so that’s a factor to consider, but he might...maybe he would do a good job. And you would be off the hook. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Emma said.
But in reality? In reality it would suck.
Emma was not a practical, even-keeled sort of person. She didn’t make decisions based on logic and reason. She was driven by emotion. Rationally, she knew that Eli was a decent human being who cared about Hart’s Ridge, and their painful history didn’t change that. As mayor, he wasn’t going to go outlawing food trucks or raising taxes on small businesses. Her life would continue on the same as it always was.
But emotionally. Emotionally, she knew that everything would change. Hart’s Ridge wouldn’t feel like home anymore. It would be his town. He would preside over all her favorite events, like the Christmas tree lighting and the Fourth of July fireworks. His infuriatingly handsome face would be everywhere.
It would be intolerable. Absolutely intolerable.
She would have to leave. This town was only big enough for the both of them when she could pretend he didn’t exist. There would be no more pretending if Eli were mayor.
It had never occurred to Emma to leave Hart’s Ridge. Then again, it had never occurred to her not to. Leaving had never been an option, not with her dad in the Asheville prison. She needed to stay close to him while he was there, and to be a soft place to land when he got out.
Every decision she had made had been focused on immediate survival, not the future or ambition. Had she wanted to run a food truck? Not particularly. But that was the opportunity that had presented itself when she needed a job. Fortunately, it turned out she did enjoy cooking—or at least she didn’t hate it—but it wasn’t her passion the way it was for Delmy Garcia, who put her heart and soul into Dreamer’s Café.
What was her passion? She had no idea. Did passion even matter, so long as bills got paid? It had always seemed to her that passion was a luxury, and quite frankly, she couldn’t afford it.
Staying in Hart’s Ridge, that was just happenstance, too. Her father would have sold the house if she had asked him to, but she couldn’t have asked it of him. He needed something stable waiting for him when he got out. And she loved the house, truly. Anyway, she had flunked out of community college, so where would she go? What would she do for money? It wasn’t like she had talent to fall back on, either.
No, she had never considered leaving, but she had never chosen to stay.
Now...now she was considering what it would be like to actually leave. And goddammit, she was staying. Hart’s Ridge was hers. She loved it. Loved the mountains. Loved the people. Loved the buildings. Loved the freaking lamp posts she had sacrificed her muscles to scrub free of rust. Maybe she wasn’t passionate about cooking burritos, but she was passionate about this. About Hart’s Ridge.
She couldn’t let Eli take it from her. She wouldn’t.
But how was she going to stop him? Who was stupid enough to go up against Eli Carter, beloved officer of Hart’s Ridge and all around hottie?
She was.
Lord help her.
“Emma.” Suzie nudged her none too gently with a swollen foot. “You okay? You’ve been quiet for a really long time.”
“Just thinking.” The fan kept spinning, and Emma kept watching. It soothed her. “You know why small towns survive? The same reason big cities do. They either make something people want, or they’re a place people want to go. Like, L.A. makes movies and New York makes...I don’t know, stocks or whatever.”
“I don’t think they make stocks,” Kate murmured.
Emma ignored her. “And Piedmont, that’s where all the good ski resorts are and the ritzy shopping, so people go there. Hart’s Ridge made chicken parts.”
“Gross.” Suzie wrinkled her nose. “You’re lucky I’m past the nauseous part of this pregnancy, because you’re directly in my path.”
“But it’s true. That’s what we did for the world. Now we don’t. So how is Hart’s Ridge going to survive? People have to come here. That’s the only answer. I don’t know why they don’t. The scenery is gorgeous, the food is amazing—”
“Thanks,” Cesar said.
“—and there’s a ton to do here. Hiking and kayaking and all that. People should come here. They would love it. You know, some girl with two million followers on social media posted a picture of her lunch at Dreamer’s Cafe yesterday, and today Delmy had more customers coming in from Asheville than she knows what to do with.” Emma had stopped on their way back from SuperMart to pick up a quick dinner to go, and Delmy had told her all about it.
“If this were a movie, that’s what the heroine would do, you know,” Emma continued. “She’d turn her house into a bed and breakfast, like her parents had always wanted. She’d contact that girl with the two million followers and a few more like her and invite them to test it out before she opened. She’d set it up so that their visit coincided with the Fourth of July celebration. That would be smart. They would post pictures all over social media, and more people would come. It would all be a huge success, the town would have a new industry to see them through, and her enemy would rue the day he ran for mayor against her.” Emma lifted a fist like she was making a vow. “Rue. The. Day.”
For a moment no one said anything, and then Kate broke the silence. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You’re going to run for mayor.”
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as the epiphany hit her. “Yeah. I’m going to open a bed and breakfast, invite social media influencers, make this year’s Fourth of July celebration the best one Hart’s Ridge has ever seen, and Eli will rue the day he ran against me. Why not?”
Because it was insane, that’s why not. But in Emma’s experience, insane plans were the best kind.
Cesar cleared his throat. “Well, shit, girl. You thought of something.”