“I can’t believe Bill would do this,” Sebastian was saying about twenty-five minutes later. Doc and Cole had left to track down the rest of the paperwork to try to make sense of whatever was happening, and after twenty-five minutes, those were the first coherent words to come out of Sebastian’s mouth. I’d never seen him so angry.
I hadn’t gotten to anger just yet. Or sadness. Or understanding. Certainly not understanding. I was just worried about Cole and anxious for him to get back with answers.
“It’ll be okay.” Brynn had shifted into fixer mode. The part of her personality that had won her the reputation as America’s Ray of Sunshine had been activated. One of her best friends had just had his life yanked out from under him, another was feeling powerless and confused, and her husband was exhibiting a temper that she jokingly said was usually reserved for her alone when she accidentally blurted out the Wordle for the day before he got there on his own. Everything in her nature forced her to try to step in and make things better for the people she loved. “I’m sure there has been some sort of misunderstanding.”
“But what if there hasn’t?” I asked.
“Then he’ll buy it back.” Brynn shrugged as if it were the most obvious suggestion in the world.
Sebastian sighed and rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry. I love you, but that’s absurd. I’m pretty sure every dime Cole has ever made has gone right back into Cassidy’s.” He looked across the table at me for verification. “Right?”
“Probably,” I whispered. “And I know it wasn’t cheap to get his grandfather into Spruce House. I could be wrong, but I got the impression Cole was paying for most of that.”
“Yeah.” Sebastian nodded. “He had talked about not wanting to have to liquidate Bill’s investments . . .” His voice trailed off, and he began fuming as the heat returned to his face. “And that’s the thanks he gets. He busted his tail to take care of Bill so that Cassidy’s wouldn’t have to be sold. And it just got pulled out from under him anyway.”
Sebastian began to stand from his chair, probably to begin another furious round of pacing around the building, but Brynn got up first. She stood behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders and held him down.
“I’m sure he can get a loan.” Sebastian opened his mouth to offer some argument, but she didn’t let him voice it. “Or we’ll give him the money.”
“Yeah, right,” I replied, laughing for the first time in a half hour or so. “You know he won’t take your money.”
Brynn considered that, but the Ray of Sunshine could not be deterred. “He may not take ours, but he’ll take yours.”
I laughed again. “Are you kidding me? Do you remember those huge dill pickles at the movie theater in Alamosa? He loved those things, and I tried to buy him one every single time we ever went—from junior high on—and I never got to. Not once. He’d either pay me back or insist on paying—for the pickle and my popcorn, it should be noted.” My laughter faded as I considered the reality before us. Before him. “But I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this would be different.”
Of course, even if my stubborn best friend would accept my help this time, we still had one major issue before us. “I’m no real estate magnate, but I’m guessing Cassidy’s would cost more than those dill pickles?”
Brynn gave Sebastian’s shoulders one final squeeze and returned to her seat at the table. “We’ll give you the money, obviously.”
“And pretend I’ve been a secret millionaire all these years? How’d that happen?” Yes, I had faithfully waited tables at both Cassidy’s and the Bean Franklin for pretty much my entire adult life, but most people in Adelaide Springs tended to show their appreciation in ways that were much more personal than money. Magda Sorenson tipped me with a dozen farm-fresh eggs every single Tuesday when she came for Cole’s chicken-fried steak dinner special, and though I didn’t cook, I could boil water. Hard-boiled eggs were my snack of choice most days. And I hadn’t bought hand soap in nearly a decade, because every time I ran out, all I had to do was mention it to Susan Singer when she was in there picking up her garden salad with a side of sunflower oil. One of her homemade goat-milk soap bars would inevitably be waiting for me on my front step when I got home.
I’d always been pretty good about saving my money, if only because there wasn’t much to spend it on in Adelaide Springs. I had a nice car and my own little house on a couple of acres at the north end of Elm Street. Yes, I’d bought the house from my dad and Melinda—who lived less than a mile away on the south end of Elm—but it was mine. Or it would be in about four more years. That wasn’t too shabby, right? I’d have the mortgage on a house I loved completely paid off before I turned forty-five. How many single, small-town waitresses could say that?
And since the internet in Adelaide Springs had become more reliable, thanks to the Sudworths working their connections to get a fiber network installed, I’d been treating myself to Netflix and getting caught up on all the shows of the past decade or so that I’d never cared enough to sit still for while they buffered. (If all you know about House of Cards is that Robin Wright is in it and you love Robin Wright, I recommend you skip it. I’m permanently scarred by seeing the darker side of Princess Buttercup.)
What’s more, I had splurged last year on the Singer Quantum Stylist 9985 sewing machine. Do you hear me? The 9985! The one with a color touch screen and thirteen different buttonhole styles. Thirteen! That baby came with 960 built-in stitches and a twenty-five-year warranty, so clearly I was doing okay for myself.
But if Cole’s grandfather really had done the unthinkable and sold Cassidy’s out from under him, my 850-a-minute high-speed stitching capabilities weren’t going to make much of a difference.
“We’ll have to loan him the money,” Sebastian said as he scratched his jawline where his five-o’clock shadow was beginning to show. “With interest.”
“Oh, come on,” Brynn objected. “We’re not going to charge him interest.”
I didn’t know exactly how wealthy the Sudworths were, but it was reasonable to assume they could buy Cassidy’s Bar & Grill many times over. In addition to their lucrative day jobs, they’d both had memoirs on the New York Times bestseller list for the better part of a year, and I knew Brynn had just landed another huge book deal and was the new face of orange juice. Not all orange juice, obviously, but one of the big brands. I couldn’t remember which. If the state of Florida or wherever could have nailed down her endorsement for oranges in general, the entire world would have said goodbye to vitamin C deficiencies. Everything she touched turned to gold.
So there’s nothing to worry about, I reminded myself. Brynn and Seb will fix this.
“No, he’s right,” I told her. “He’s not going to want anyone’s charity. Even to hold on to Cassidy’s. It’s going to have to be beneficial for you guys, too, or I’m pretty sure he won’t even consider it.”
We all sat quietly, considering the possibilities, until Brynn’s eyes flew open and she pounded her fist on the table. She turned to face Sebastian, who was already giving her his full attention in anticipation of whatever brilliant thing she was about to come up with. Brynn may have had the reputation of being bubbly and cheery and all of that, but Sebastian knew, as I did, that she was a semimaniacal freak-of-nature genius underneath all the pop-culture references and TikTok video obsessions.
“Let’s go corporate.” She threw her hands up in the air as she said the words, then crossed her arms over her chest and sat back in her chair as if there was nothing more to say on the matter.
And I guess that’s why the Sudworths made such a good team. Because Sebastian was tracking.
“Yes.” He grabbed her face in his hands and planted a quick kiss square on her lips. “Yes. Of course. That’s it.”
Brynn and I had always been pretty good at speaking the same language too. In high school, we would make plans to sneak out of our houses at night right under our parents’ noses. (I mean, sure, we’d do the sneaking right under their noses, of course, but most teenagers could do that. It was the planning right under their noses that was really impressive.) And when it came to John Mayer songs, it was like we had our own private language that would have made zero sense to the rest of the world.
“What’s the one that always makes me hungry?”
“‘Why Georgia’?”
“Yes! Thank you. Although, come to think of it, I think I’m in more of a ‘Heartbreak Warfare’ mood.”
“So . . . tater tots?”
“Perfect.”
But this? I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. “What does that mean? ‘Corporate’?” I looked to Sebastian, since he had been the last to speak, but he gestured for Brynn to take the floor and share her idea.
She leaned forward onto her elbows. “If we take our feelings for Cole out of this, it’s still easy to see that buying Cassidy’s right now would be a super-smart investment. I haven’t looked at the books or anything, but it’s obvious that business has picked up over the past couple of years.”
Sebastian nodded. “Right. Adelaide Springs is growing. There are going to be more restaurants soon. There will have to be. But Cassidy’s is the standard bearer.”
“He won’t be able to argue with us wanting to invest and make things as good as they can possibly be before the population boom really hits.” She smiled at me and then rested her hand on Sebastian’s forearm. “Actually, we should probably think about buying up some of the empty houses out on the county roads.”
“And the downtown storefronts.” Sebastian pulled his phone out and began tapping away. “Whoever bought Cassidy’s from Bill—this is probably just the beginning. We need to do all we can to keep the properties local. I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before.”
Okay. I got it. I was all caught up and couldn’t deny they’d probably stumbled upon the most Cole-friendly approach to fixing this mess. It was easy enough to fill in the gaps. They, along with Cole and whoever else, would own shares of Cassidy’s. Or percentages. I mean, it wasn’t going to be traded on the stock market or anything, right? Okay . . . so multiple people would own it, and then when Cole’s percentage made enough money, as Brynn and Sebastian were confident it would, it seemed, he could buy everyone else out. Yeah, if he was going to go for anything, that was probably it.
But as I watched them buzzing with excitement—looking up addresses on their phones and throwing out numbers to each other that made as much sense to me as an unquantifiable John Mayer hunger scale would mean to most people—I just felt sad. Like something had been lost that would never be reclaimed. Sure, maybe Cole would ultimately be the sole owner of Cassidy’s. All the hard work that he had poured into the place—the literal blood, sweat, and tears he’d devoted to what I was pretty sure would go down as the love of his life—would still, somehow, all be worthwhile. With Brynn and Seb working in Cole’s corner, Cassidy’s was going to reach new levels of success he hadn’t even dreamed of. I didn’t have any difficulty believing that. Cassidy’s could still be his legacy, as he’d always wanted it to be.
But no one and no amount of money or success or legacy would ever be able to rid him of the moment when, in his mind, all his deepest fears were confirmed. The ones he had only ever shared with me, I was fairly certain. Maybe Brynn and Sebastian could fix the situation, but what was it going to take to fix Cole? Would he ever again believe anything other than what now probably appeared to him to be the cold, hard, indisputable truth? I couldn’t believe it was true, but from Cole’s perspective, of course he was going to believe that as the adopted son of Bill Kimball’s stepdaughter, he was an outsider. Never fully connected. Easily disregarded. The grandfather whose needs Cole had always put before his own had never counted him as his real family after all. Who was ever going to be able to convince him of anything else after this?
“I want to invest.” I made the declaration with as much certainty as I’d ever said anything in my life, I was pretty sure. At least since 2010, when I’d stood up in the theater at the end of Extraordinary Measures and confidently declared Brendan Fraser was going to win an Oscar. (My timing may have been off a bit, but who’s laughing now, suckers?)
I’m not sure what they had been saying to each other—or to me, maybe?—right then, but they were suddenly silent as I jumped up and ran over to grab my purse from behind the bar. I pulled my phone out and clicked on my banking app, did a little figuring in my head, and hurried back over.
“How big a share will twenty-five thousand dollars get me?”
They stared at me for a moment, and then Sebastian pulled his eyes away, and I was suddenly a little embarrassed. These were two people with whom I always felt comfortable being who I was, for better or worse, but at that moment I wanted to be who I was but with a more impressive investment portfolio.
“I know it’s not much.”
I looked down at my favorite heels—the ones I had picked out in Denver three years ago when Cole took me shopping for my birthday and told me to pick out the pair I loved most, no matter the price. I knew he meant it, but I also knew I’d rather he spend his money splurging on appetizers and dessert at Cheesecake Factory, so I only looked in the clearance section. And there I’d found my favorite pair of shoes of all time, which I’d worn while waiting tables and at Brynn and Seb’s rehearsal dinner, right there in Cassidy’s a little over a week ago, and on more than one occasion while sitting on my deck reading a book. They were a translucent sort of pale pink with a glittery effect. They reminded me of the jelly shoes I’d been obsessed with as a kid, except they had a kitten heel that made me feel like a cross between Cinderella running away at midnight and Peggy Olson on Mad Men, after she came into her own and started writing ads for Heinz Baked Beans and such. (Again, better internet has opened a whole new world to me.)
Right now, my favorite heels were making me feel like I didn’t belong at this table of power investors. I loved them, but what had they cost? Thirty-two bucks, I think. Don’t get me wrong—it had been completely worth it, being able to sit across the table from Cole an hour later, feeling sorry for Cinderella that she’d not taken advantage of a little bibbidi-bobbidi magic to conjure up some Tex-Mex Eggrolls and Very Cherry Ghirardelli Chocolate Cheesecake. But Brynn probably wore Louboutin pumps to walk to the end of the driveway and check her mail. I’d never been jealous of her until that very moment, when I wished I had a closet full of shoes like that to sell.
“I don’t know when I’ll actually get the ten thousand Bill left me, come to think of it.” I really wished I could quit my feet from shuffling. I was going to scratch up the wood floor with my stupid, cheap kitten heel if I wasn’t careful. “So, right now, I can do fifteen grand.”
I sighed. Quit talking, Laila. And stop thinking. This isn’t getting any better. “And most of that’s in a CD, so I’ll need a few days to close that out.”
How much would the early-closure penalty take away?
Here, guys . . . I have about a buck fifty-two to contribute to the cause.
“I love you so much,” Brynn whispered.
“I really wish I could do more.”
“Are you kidding? This is amazing. You’re amazing!” she exclaimed.
Sebastian met my eyes, which I’d finally raised from my feet. “You know Cole won’t want you to do that.” I began to protest, but he didn’t give me the chance. “But don’t you take no for an answer. You hear me?”
I grinned and nodded. “I hear you.”
Just then we heard the rumble of Cole’s Jeep Wrangler as it pulled into Cassidy’s gravel parking lot. I ran to the door to try to catch sight of him before he knew I was looking. Before he had a chance to put on a carefully constructed face to alleviate his friends’ concerns. Brynn and Sebastian cleared their throats and shuffled behind me, preparing the stage for their presentation, if necessary, and probably hoping to sell it as a perfectly constructed, carefully considered earnest calculation while still somehow making it look like it just came to them off the top of their heads and was really no big thing.
He was going to see straight through it, of course. He’d see straight through all of it. But I was confident he’d eventually accept the help.
Or I was confident until the glare on his windshield from the setting sun stopped bouncing back into my eyes and I was able to see him clearly for the first time. He looked unconcerned. Carefree. Happy, even. His lips seemed to be pursed in a whistle, and though his eyes were showing the exhaustion that had accumulated over the course of the week, the creases at the corners of them seemed to be tilting upward again. He parked the Wrangler between my Subaru Outback and Brynn and Seb’s brand-new Bronco Sport—a wedding present from Brynn because she refused to keep riding around in the 1974 orange-and-white Bronco Seb had been borrowing from Andi Franklin pretty much since he’d moved to Adelaide Springs—and stepped down with an undeniable spring in his step.
My entire body released the tension I hadn’t been aware I was holding as I let out a trembling breath. “It’s okay,” I called over my shoulder. “It must have been a mistake.”
“Are you sure?” Sebastian asked, standing to try to peek out the window. “I don’t think we should get our hopes up—”
“Seb.” I turned and faced him, a beaming smile on my face. “Trust me. It’s fine.”
If there was one thing I was more of an expert on than the long-ignored talents of underappreciated movie stars of the nineties and early aughts, it was Cole Kimball. Everything was going to be fine now. I’d bet two Encino Men and a George of the Jungle on it.