Chapter Twenty-Three
Emily
I had to move quickly. Waking up the next morning with Rhett at my side, I was consumed with urgency. I had to talk to Dad before Jacob had a chance to tell him what I’d done last night. I’d made sure to email him as soon as I got back to the apartment with Rhett to tell him that I needed to see him as early as possible, that I had important stuff to talk about. I could only hope that it would be enough for him to put Jacob off for a bit.
After a little bit of morning loving, Rhett went back to Mustang Ridge. Fifteen minutes after he’d left, I got a text message from my dad, asking if we could have lunch somewhere. I texted him back immediately that I would meet him at Pappadeaux at noon, and then I got to work on putting together the evidence for him.
I’d managed to successfully get all of the stuff I’d sent to myself from Jacob’s computer, and while I was killing time before I had to get ready to meet with Dad, I printed it off and highlighted the most important things so I could make sure Dad got the point and understood what was going on. I shook my head, feeling bummed already, remembering all the times that Dad had taken me to Pappadeaux as a treat—a special extravagance for birthday dinners, or when I made Honor Roll or Dean’s List, things like that. I was glad he was willing to meet with me, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to get him to understand—or if, even after he found out what Jacob had done, he would still agree that the compromise solution would be the best one.
I needed to look just right: professional, sharp, but not like I was going into the office. I needed to look like my father’s daughter, like someone he should take seriously and someone he would want to listen to, all at once. I kept my hair down, just smoothing it a bit. I put on a skirt and blouse, and a pair of low heels—something I might have worn in college to go out to lunch or dinner with Dad. I did my makeup, checked again to make sure that I had the evidence. Then it was time to leave.
There are few places on earth that smell more heavenly than the inside of Pappadeaux, and I felt relieved to be in the dining room to meet with Dad. He wasn’t going to make a scene here, no matter what he thought about what I had to tell him.
I caught sight of him waiting for me at the front, and I took a deep breath to keep my nerves from driving me crazy.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.
He looked a bit tense still, but not like he planned to cut me out of his life anytime soon. He still loved me, and more to the point, he still wanted to love me.
“I hope you’ve got some good news for me, Em,” he said.
One of the staff came to show us to a table. I gathered my thoughts as we walked behind her, telling myself that I was doing the right thing on multiple levels.
“I don’t know that it’s good news, but it’s stuff you need to hear,” I told him, once we sat down with our menus. I didn’t need to look—I knew what I wanted—but it did give us the excuse for a few minutes to ourselves without getting interrupted by a server.
“If you’re just here to tell me that we can compromise, I’m not sure I want to hear it,” he said.
“I need to talk to you about Jacob.”
“You want me to fire him just because he spread some loose talk to me about your personal life?” Dad set his menu down.
“No. I want you to fire him because he’s a goddamn crook, Daddy. And I have proof.”
Dad stared at me for a long moment, shocked both at my language and my accusation. “A crook? Tell me.”
I took the papers from my purse and handed them over.
“He made a deal with the client—a side deal—to get a bonus payment from them in return for convincing you to let him pitch the idea of a bigger project,” I said. “Him and some other guy on the town council in Mustang Ridge got tens of thousands of dollars between the two of them for pulling the wool over your eyes and letting you think you talked them into putting the shopping center there.”
“The hell you say,” Dad protested, even as he looked down at the papers in his hand.
I knew he couldn’t deny it—not with Jacob’s messages back and forth to the company we’d contracted with, and with the member of the town council, all that. And he definitely couldn’t deny it with the revised contracts in front of him, showing where there had been a screw-up that should have been detected by the accounting department—but that was a matter for Dad to take care of another day.
“You see?” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him, daring him to tell me that I was wrong—or worse, that he didn’t care that one of his own employees was screwing him out of money that should rightfully be his. “What other deals do you think Jacob’s been making on his own, on the side?”
Before he could answer me, the waitress came and asked if we’d made up our minds. I got my usual: crawfish etouffee, with fresh green beans and butternut squash on the side. Dad got shrimp and grits, and asparagus and garlic bread on the side, and ordered us beers and crab cakes to start off. Once we were alone again, he looked at me.
“I believe I’m going to have to let that son of a bitch go.” Dad shook his head. “And I’m going to have some words with Wilson over there in the company about making deals that cut me out.”
“I know you don’t want to back out of the deal altogether,” I said. “And I know you think I’m on Rhett’s side, but really I think both sides can compromise on this.”
“Don’t bring that up with me right now, Em,” he said in a warning voice.
“Now’s as good a time as any,” I pointed out with a smile.
He sighed and shook his head. “Let’s settle in to eat and then we can talk about what you think a compromise solution would look like.”
I decided to go along with that—it was fair, after all, and I thought it would put him in a better mood overall.
I sat back and sipped my beer when it came, and sampled the crab cakes. We chit-chatted about nothing, and I waited until our actual meals came to broach the topic again. I considered my position pretty carefully—I knew if I pushed on Dad too hard, even with what he’d just learned and maybe especially with what he’d just learned about Jacob, he’d likely push back.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “I think we can come up with a solution that will still be good for the company, and also be decent for Mustang Ridge.” I outlined the thing I’d suggested to Rhett before—that instead of bringing in partners from other parts of the country, bring in the Mustang Ridge merchants to open up their centralized locations in the bigger strip mall arrangement we had already contracted to build. That way, everything would be updated—and it would be something that everyone in the town could partake in, instead of being driven out. It was different from the older compromise I’d come up with, which was just for the original build.
“I think they might go for that,” Dad said in a thoughtful voice. “But I don’t know that it’ll work out if the town doesn’t go for it—and your boy Rhett is trying to avoid us putting anything there. You know that.”
“True. But right now he just wants to make sure it’s the best thing for everyone in town,” I said. “Just bringing in the store isn’t going to improve anything for anyone—but building the strip mall with all the local businesses in it is something that would actually help Mustang Ridge. Especially if we go with the original base company instead of the fully expanded location. Just the base store—stuff that people in town wouldn’t be able to get from the grocery or hardware store or the other places that already exist.”
Dad pressed his lips together and ate a little more of his food, and I let him think about it for a bit.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said, waving the server over for the check.
I nodded. “Thanks for hearing me out, Dad. I’ve drawn up what the finished project might look like. I have it here if you want to look it over.”
He gestured that I should show it to him, so I pulled the plans from my oversized purse and handed them to him.
His lightly-lined face was thoughtful as he perused the plans. “I’m still not sure that you’re going to get everyone to agree to this,” he said, shaking his head. “Rhett’s been working hard to convince the people not to sell to us.”
“Why don’t we talk to him about it?” I wanted to see Rhett again, which surprised me because I’d just said goodbye to him this morning. Besides that, I really hoped Dad and Rhett could come to an agreement. “This plan would require less land, and it would mean we could mostly buy up from the property the town has open, instead of the farms.”
Dad frowned. “Let’s see what your boyfriend has to say.”
I didn’t tell him that technically, Rhett wasn’t my boyfriend. Rhett and I hadn’t talked about what we were to each other, beyond both of us agreeing that the sex was good, and that we had a shared goal for the moment.
I texted Rhett to tell him that we would be coming over. He responded that his mother would love to have us for dinner.
As I drove Dad and myself out to Mustang Ridge, I thought that if anyone could convince my dad of anything, it would be Mrs. Baxter. She seemed to have gotten on pretty well with him so far.
“Thanks for coming by,” Rhett said when we got out of the car together.
Dad shook his hand and there was that tension between them, but I could tell they were both trying to be on their best behavior.
“Always glad to have a reason to make some time with a beautiful woman like your mother,” Dad said.
We went inside and I greeted Rhett’s mother, hugging her quickly before we all sat down.
“I think we might be on the edge of coming up with a way to make everyone happy,” I said, taking out the plans I’d drawn up. I’d shown parts of them to Rhett before. “There’s just a couple of loose ends to tie up.”
“We’ve already made some preliminary agreements to purchase land here,” Dad said. “So I’m not sure if we can do your deal exactly, Em, but I think we can come to an agreement on this somehow.”
I nodded. “We know that Rhett’s against people selling their farmlands off for this project,” I said. “I’m not sure how we can get around that—or the fact that there are people who really do need the money more than they need the land. But I think you’ll see that if we do this, fewer people are going to have to sell their land to make it happen.”
“There are empty lots that would cover what you have marked here,” Rhett said. “Lands that came up free after people didn’t pass their farms on to any heirs.”
“But that doesn’t solve the problem of the people we’ve already made agreements with,” Dad pointed out.
“I can cover them,” Rhett said.
I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
Rhett shrugged. “I haven’t been making a big deal about it, because I wasn’t raised to brag, but I convinced Justin and a few of the others to hold off on selling while I floated them for a while,” Rhett said. “So what I could do is to sort of float some of these other farms for a year or two—give them funding—and basically make it so they don’t need to sell. If you think that would help.”
“If they refuse to sell,” I said, looking over at Dad, “we’ll have to tell the company that they can’t have that much space, and they’d have to take the smaller amount, and do the other deal.”
“The town council already approved the old deal,” Dad said. “So what are we going to do about that?”
“I’m only about a dozen signatures away from having enough to force the town council to meet,” Rhett explained. “We’ll discuss this project and have everyone in the town vote on it.”
Dad considered that for a moment and then nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” He looked over at Rhett’s mother. “I hope you’ll still have us for dinner, even though we’ve already come to an agreement on this.”
Mrs. Baxter smiled at him. “I already started making a big meal for four,” she said. “I am not about to let you go without being fed, so don’t even think about it.”