He was getting annihilated up there. But her neighbors wanted answers Turner just didn’t have. Answers no one could reasonably have right now. There just hadn’t been enough time to have the answers they wanted.
No one in Finley Creek or Barratt County had been forgotten. Ninety percent of the people in the room were there because of damage from the storm. It had hit their neighborhood extremely hard. Most of the damage from the storm had occurred on the southern side of the town, including the hospital and the area directly behind it and just north of it. Her area.
The Clean Up Boethe Street initiative had taken a definite backseat to the reparations from the storm. She understood it. He’d saved all but five houses from the initiative, after all. Shouldn’t that count for something? It had to.
After Harley, a rude, obnoxious ass who had bluntly told her once he didn’t want boys of her kids’ type living in his neighborhood, practically blasted Turner as being responsible for the storm itself. The things Harley had said to her over the years were unprintable and unrepeatable. Only Jake’s regular presence was enough to keep him at bay. The guy had always been a jackass.
When the crowd was getting restless and the questions were starting to repeat, and the hostility grew, Annie couldn’t take it any longer. Annie stood.
Josie grabbed her hand. “What are you doing? Sit down, Ann.”
“This is just getting stupid, Jo. Nothing is getting done. And people are running out of time. And he…Turner doesn’t deserve this. At all. He’s not like they’re making him out to be.”
Annie raised her hand, and the deputy mayor looked at her. She recognized him from the hospital, where he’d sat with his grandson after a recent surgery. He’d seemed like a perfectly reasonable man. He was also on the board of directors of the hospital.
She squared her shoulders. “I have something to say, and I’m going to say it.”
The deputy mayor held up a hand and the crowd quieted reasonably well. Turner stood at the podium next to him. “Annie?”
Annie pulled in a breath and tried to stop the shaking. What she was doing was crazy.
Turner Barratt didn’t need her to defend him.
Not by a long shot.
There were others at the front of the community center. At least three were from the city council, she thought. And the deputy mayor. He was watching her with a kind expression on his face.
All of them were watching her.
But she had never let herself look like a fool in front of people. She was going to say what she had to say, and then she’d sit down, shut up, and never do this again.