Gil was having lunch at Deacon’s Grill with Mac, trying to get their proposal ready for the town council meeting that night, when Audrey Lupine burst into the Grill holding a bar of Faithfulness Soap. He was surprised librarians could be so loud. “How did you know?” she kept saying to Sandy Burnside, whose coffee break had been hijacked by the wildly emotional outburst. “However did you know?”
“Know what, honey?” Sandy said, foraging in her handbag for a tissue as Audrey was on the verge of tears.
“I was thinking of…of resigning at the end of the month. I’ve just felt so…useless. Everybody looks up whatever they need on the Internet now.”
“You’re a lot more than a reference librarian, Audrey, we depend on you in lots of ways,” Sandy said, peering over Audrey’s shoulder to the other Grill customers. With a raised eyebrow and a sharp glance, she cued them to echo her thoughts.
“Yeah, sure,” “We need you” and “You’re great” bubbled up through the tiny crowd, making Audrey sniff and straighten herself.
“This morning, I found this bar of Edmundson’s Faithfulness Soap on my desk—you know, that new stuff Emily sells down at her shop. It came with a note from the Library Board thanking me for my years of faithful service. I hadn’t even realized it was my tenth anniversary there.” Her voice dissolved into a wobbly sob on the last word.
“You have been faithful,” Sandy said, handing her another tissue. “We know you have. And nobody needs a bar of soap to recognize that.”
“What is it with the soap craze?” Mac whispered to Gil.
“You think I know?” Gil shot back. “How should I know?”
“Well, of course we know you deserve it,” Howard Epson said importantly as he eased himself up out of a corner booth. Howard must not have been the one to give the gift, or he’d have taken credit by now. As a matter of fact, he looked a little put out that someone had done something notable without his input. “Who signed the card, anyway? You should thank ’em right away.”
Audrey sniffled loudly as she rummaged through the lavender-colored tissue paper. Emily had her hand in there somewhere, or she knew who did, that much was sure. “Don’t know.” She pulled out the card. “It just says ‘from the Library Board.’” Which seemed to miff Howard, for now someone had done something in the name of the Library Board without the permission of its esteemed chairman.
“I bet it’s Dinah Hopkins. She’s always doin’ stuff like that,” offered Sandy.
“But wouldn’t Dinah just have sent something over from the bakery?” Audrey asked, blowing her nose. It made sense; Dinah owned the bakery and she was the generous type. “She knows I love her sticky buns.”
“It doesn’t really matter who got it for you,” Sandy said. “It matters that you got it. That you know we think you’ve served us faithfully and we ain’t in any hurry to loose you. You got that, darlin’?” With one arm she hugged Audrey’s shoulders, while she cued applause from the Grill with the other behind Audrey’s back.
It was all Gil could do not to shake his head in wonder as he stood there, applauding the town librarian and her faithfulness. The moment lunch was over, he took a little trip over to West of Paris. “All right, fess up,” he said as he opened the door. “You gave the bar of Faithfulness Soap to Audrey, didn’t you?”
“Pardon?”
She was acting casual, but she had a grin behind her eyes, he could see it.
“Dinah Hopkins bought it?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“Sandy?”
“No, why?”
“So you have no idea how somebody knew Audrey was thinking about quitting the library? No concept of how a bar of Faithfulness Soap mysteriously appeared on her desk to thank her for being so…you know…faithful?”
The grin came out from behind her eyes and played full across her face. “I may know something about that.”
“But you’re not telling.” Gil stared at her. “Do you know everything about everyone around here?”
She didn’t answer. She just stood there, grinning in that peach-colored lacy sweater of hers, without saying a word.
“There’s got to be another solution. Widening that road is just plain wrong. Might as well just extend the freeway and put in an exit ramp with four fast food chains.” Sandy Burnside took off her sparkly reading glasses and tossed them on the table.
Gil’s composure hung by a thin thread, and Mac’s wasn’t far behind. It was already 10:00 p.m. and the council had three more items on the docket. If Howard hadn’t gone off on one of his tangents and forced the whole council to listen to a detailed account of his last mare sale, they could have been a whole hour ahead.
“That’s just the point, Ms. Burnside,” said Mac. Gil recognized the I’m-trying-not-to-get-angry tone in Mac’s voice. The two of them had worked for weeks on this recommendation, and most of the council members had dismissed it in a matter of seconds. “If we adjust the roadways to handle the traffic now, we won’t have to do anything drastic in the future.”
“I don’t see why we have to do anything now,” Emily said, running her fingers down the tables of projections Mac’s company had put in their proposal. “This report says we won’t need that kind of infrastructure for another four years.”
“But we’ve already agreed the road needs resurfacing now,” Gil countered. “If we do the expansion now, we’ll save money in the long run.”
“Save money,” Sandy looked up, “or just make it easier to run those fancy computer cables?”
What have these people got against technology? Gil screamed in his head. “You’ve already seen what it’s been like to try and retrofit the high school with Internet access. People want Internet access. Tourists want Internet access. We need to plan ahead or we’ll be forever playing catch-up.”
“Well, I like catsup,” Howard joked. Howard always thought any argument could be solved by the right joke. “Especially on hot dogs.” Gil felt validated when everyone moaned. Not that it helped. He mentally counted to ten and tried to remember that two hours ago, he’d actually liked most of these people.
“I’m not asking you to say yes or no tonight,” Gil said with the most level voice he could. “Let’s all try to remember the principle of first reading and not squash an idea without really considering it.”
“We’ve been considering it,” Sandy Burnside sighed. “I don’t think another two weeks is gonna make this idea seem any better to me.”
“Well,” Emily said, “I suppose we could look at these traffic projections again. I’m not convinced we know what kind of traffic we’ll have in four years. I’d hate to add another lane only to find out we don’t need it.”
“But we will need it,” Gil retorted. “We’re already starting to need it. It’s a four-lane road, people, not a shopping mall.”
“One tends to lead to the other,” Sandy said, bringing a chorus of agreement from around the table.
Gil looked straight at Emily. “Can we just let this sit for a session or two? Let people get used to the concept?” He hadn’t expected anyone to say yes tonight. As a matter of fact, he’d fully anticipated that the project would only get approved with a two-year delay. To get anything done in Middleburg, you had to plan for resistance and compromise if not outright opposition. Come on, Emily Montague, work with me here. I got a dozen guys memorizing scripture in the shower—that says you know your way to a solution. He stared at her. He raised an eyebrow.
“A second reading is always a wise idea,” she said. “If it still looks bad two weeks from now, we’ll know our first impulses were right.”
Gil exhaled.
“Fine, fine, I motion we table it for a second reading. Can we please move on now? We still have the report from the Character Day subcommittee,” Sandy said.
“That would be you, Sandy,” Howard joked. “You’re a subcommittee of one.”
“If anyone could be a subcommittee all by herself, it’d be Sandy,” another member of the council said. Howard seemed annoyed that someone tagged on to his joke.
Sandy plunked her elbows down on the table. “Are y’all gonna let me say my piece or what? Some of us need a full eight hours of sleep, you know.”
“Go ahead, Sandy, you’ve got the floor.”
“I put a lot of thought into the Character Day speaker this year. This year’s theme of integrity is highly important.”
Emily felt the pit of her stomach drop down. Suddenly she was sure she’d made the wrong decision. Sandy would say her name and then the entire town council would groan their disapproval. She’d prayed over this for days, and she was sure—up until now—that this was something she should do. Now she was certain she’d misunderstood God and was about to make a fool of herself.
“So I’m pleased to announce that our own Emily Montague has accepted my request to be our Character Day speaker.”
Emily thought the moment would feel bigger. Like some kind of crucial watershed where her heart skipped and people’s jaws dropped in shock. But it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone looked at her, but there was no astonishment, no alarm. “Why, of course,” said Audrey Lupine almost instantly. “Oh, hon, I can’t think of anyone better.”
“I know this is a big step for Emily, and I think we can all show her that we’re in full-support of her decision to share her story with our young men and women.” Sandy began to applaud enthusiastically, and the rest of the town council applauded, as well. Emily smiled, trying to look as if she was excited about this. It felt more like her stomach was full of tightly wound springs ready to uncoil at any moment. She was grateful when the meeting broke up ten minutes later.