Chapter Twenty-Four
Rhett
I looked around at the people coming into the big auditorium attached to the town’s administrative building. They came in ones and twos, in families and little groups of friends. The Mustang Ridge Town Council had set itself up on one side of a big table, and the chairs were set out for everyone else who might be interested in watching the proceedings. I knew that I was going to be the official-unofficial spokesman for the town. I felt nervous, even though these were people I’d known my whole life.
It seemed to me that all the roughly two thousand people were coming in, including the kids. The council had been forced to meet after all, and they’d made the meeting as public as possible, probably to avoid any accusation that they were trying to cover up what they were doing.
Of course, Emily had found out about there being a member on the council who’d worked with Jacob to make the newer, much more disastrous deal. I’d managed to figure out who it was specifically. Todd Johnson, who was only a little bit older than me, had been the one to make a deal with Jacob. I’d kept that information to myself just for the sake of having it up my sleeve in case things got too heated, or in case it looked like things weren’t going the way that Emily and I wanted them to. I was pretty sure that her dad wouldn’t care if it came to that. He was going to make bank from putting this business in Mustang Ridge either way, and he’d fired Jacob for making side deals. The only people I knew for sure wanted this new plan were me and Emily, and a few of the farmers I’d talked into letting me float them for a year or so from the money I’d made with my investments.
Some of them had been too proud to start off with, but I’d made them a deal: I wouldn’t just be giving them money, I was buying my way into being a part-owner of their farm, investing in them. That way, too, there was less of an ability or the company that Martin Lewis was bringing in to buy up the land in the first place. There were just papers to sign and it would be done, and assuming that things worked out, I’d eventually make back the money I was giving my friends. Everyone would win.
Finally, everyone had more or less arrived. The leader of our town’s council, Fred Vaughn, stood up to announce that the meeting was going to begin.
“From what I understand from the petition that was brought to us by Mr. Rhett Baxter, there’s some concern that the council is approving plans for development that might not be in the best interests of Mustang Ridge,” Fred said. “While there are folks on both sides of this issue, it’s obviously important enough to all the folks here that we actually talk about this, in detail, before moving forward with any plans.”
He sat down and Jessica Tillby, another member of the council, stood up to do her part of the intro. “We’re going to open this up to the floor, but we want things to be orderly. We’re not a big town, obviously, but there’s still over a thousand of us total here, so we’re going to be letting folks talk one at a time, and since Rhett has spearheaded the move to make this meeting happen, the council has decided it’s only fair to let him go first. Then we can discuss things more broadly.”
I stepped up to the front and turned so that I was facing both the council and the townspeople. I took a quick, deep breath. I knew I could do this, and between me and Emily I knew we could make something good happen here tonight.
“Thanks for hearing me out, and I want to thank the town council for agreeing to meet,” I said. “The issue as I see it is this: the proposed development as it stands right now is something that I think will end up destroying Mustang Ridge. That might sound alarmist to some of you, but if you really think about it with some common sense, I think you’ll agree with me.” I took another breath to let what I was saying hit home. “The plan that the council approved includes not just a big-box store, which on its own would mean that lots of folks here would have to sell property to make room for it, but also a big strip mall around it—with companies that have franchises all over the US. And those franchises would compete with our local business.”
I explained the whole setup, pointing out specific people who it would potentially put out of business, and going over how I could foresee the development proceeding, how I could see it impacting the town as a whole. A few people got restless and I could see that there was still going to be opposition to what I was saying—but I could hope that by the time it was Emily’s turn to come up, with my support, that it would shake out just fine.
“I’m not going to go on all night, because I think it’s important that all of us who want to be heard get heard,” I finished. “But I want y’all to all think about not just what this means for you personally—how much easier it would be to sell off some or all of your land instead of working it in a slump—but what this means for the town we’ve all grown up in, where lots of us have kids that are growing up.”
I looked once more around the room and then took the seat I’d claimed near Emily and her dad.
We’d planned out how we were going to do what we came to do, and I could only help that the council would cooperate with us, that things wouldn’t get too out of hand before Emily and I could propose the solution to the conflict in front of us. I sat still as some of the people I hadn’t been able to convince not to sell came up to the same spot I’d taken and voiced their concerns: that Mustang Ridge was, ultimately, behind the times, that things were tough for a lot of farmers, and that it wasn’t fair to expect people to hold off on selling land when they could make more money off of it than they were able to farming. In between those people were some of those I’d managed to convince, or who hadn’t needed convincing at all, and their message was pretty clear too.
Fred interrupted the proceedings after about half a dozen people from either side had spoken, to redirect and bring people back to focus. “The issue I see at hand here is a question of whether it’s fair for a few of us to make a decision that affects all of us. I understand that the company in charge of buying the land for the development here has a representative in the audience?”
Emily raised her hand. All the eyes in the room swiveled to look at her.
“There are some concerns that Mr. Baxter has brought to the attention of the council as a whole, as well,” Jessica said. “We’ve been pretty quiet up here because the purpose of this meeting is to hear what you all have to say, but I want to hear from Rhett and from Emily—but only if the town as a whole thinks it’s worthwhile. So we’re going to take a vote.” This was the moment that our plans hinged on; if no one thought it was worth hearing from me and Emily, then we might not even get a chance to show the town what kind of counter proposal we could make.
Jessica led the vote by a show of hands. There were just enough hands up in the crowd to let Emily and me speak. I gave her fingers a squeeze and we both walked up to the front.
“Most of you here who are concerned with the decision being made tonight have met me, one way or another,” Emily said. “Some of you I convinced to sell to the company I work for—that my dad owns—and some of you I’ve talked into signing the petition to have this meeting in the first place. I wanted to talk to you all about a possible different path that Mustang Ridge can take, but first I think that it’s important to address something that has come up in an investigation into this particular development plan.”
“Emily found out in checking out the contracts and contacts that her company’s representative—some of y’all met him, Jacob—made a side-deal with the big store that’s going in here,” I said.
“Not only did he make a deal with the company,” Emily added, when we could both tell that everyone was wondering just what that meant to Mustang Ridge. “I found out—and Rhett was able to confirm—that he made a side deal as well with a member of the town council. The two conspired to make this happen as quickly and easily as possible.”
I glanced over at the table with the council members seated at it, and I could tell that Todd was trying to keep his composure. He wasn’t succeeding all that well.
“Todd Johnson made a deal with someone outside of this town to affect the future of this town, for the sake of getting about ten thousand dollars in his pocket,” I said. “No matter what other conclusion this meeting comes to, I would move that Todd doesn’t belong on the council anymore.”
“This is really serious,” Fred said, and while his voice was calm, I could tell he was furious. “I assume the two of you have proof?”
Emily nodded and gestured to her dad, who’d been holding the folder with the paperwork showing what had been done. Once I’d figured out who it was on the council that Jacob had gotten to, it had been pretty easy for Emily to find the documentation in the office that had made the transfer of payment from her company to Todd, through Jacob, possible. She handed the folder to Fred. Todd tried to reach for it—only to get his hand smacked by Jessica.
For a while, there was nothing but chaos—people shouting, the members of the council going over the paperwork and arguing amongst themselves, people demanding copies of the paperwork, and so on. Emily had come prepared; she’d also compiled the emails between Jacob and Todd, and she’d made copies of them to hand out—just the relevant stuff, so that people would know what they were looking at. Everyone started to quiet down as they looked over the evidence.
“I believe this calls for a vote of no confidence in Todd Johnson,” Jessica said finally, once everyone had absorbed the information.
“We’re not going to do a vocal vote because I’m not sure we’ll be able to get a clear count,” Fred told us all. “We’re going to do this by hand-raise. All those in favor of keeping Todd Johnson on the town council?”
Even among those who had been in favor of selling their property to make room for the big store, there weren’t many who were all that fond of Todd’s deal and how he’d managed to make himself richer in such a shady way. Overwhelmingly, people wanted him off the council.
Todd, red-faced, got up and left through a rear exit. Several people booed him as he went.
“We’ll have elections for the vacancy on our town council in a matter of a week or two,” Fred concluded. “Now that that’s settled, I think we can get on to what you were going to discuss in view of the development.”
I handed the platform over to Emily, who explained her compromise of a smaller, more compact version of the big box store, and that the strip mall would include the businesses that were already in Mustang Ridge.
Once more, some chaos erupted in the room, and Emily and I both stepped back to let it happen around us. There were people who still wanted to sell their land off, there were people accusing others of trying to put them out of. It seemed to rage back and forth for at least thirty minutes, with the council itself—minus Todd—occasionally intervening to bring things to some semblance of order.
Finally, it got through to people that the solution that Emily and I had proposed would still bring more business to the town, would still give a few people the chance to sell part of their land. I planned on bringing up the arrangement I’d made with some of the other members of the town to a few that wanted to sell, later. It sank in, finally, that Emily’s plan would allow the town to stay intact, much more than the other plan would have allowed.
“Let’s take a vote on this,” Fred suggested, once everything had finally hit a kind of calm. “Hands up if you’re in favor of the new plan, and Nancy Harris will count.”
I waited, on pins and needles, watching the vote; at first it was too close to really know, and Jessica chided people for seeming to vote for both options. Another round, and then the third, and finally we had our answer: the people of Mustang Ridge wanted the plan that Emily and I had presented.
Everything wound down from there, with the town council reminding the room that there would be upcoming elections, and how the nomination process would go, and discussing another meeting to come, as well as future “progress” meetings about the development that Emily and her dad would be bringing to the town.
After all of that, it was only nine at night. I was exhausted, but at the same time, the thought of Emily going back to Houston after our triumph was grating. I wanted more than anything to really celebrate it—with her, and her alone. It was, after all, our triumph. And then too, I thought that she would be spending more time in Houston now that the plans were more or less finalized. There was so much up in the air between us.
“Em?”
She stopped short and turned to face me as we left the auditorium together.
“Sorry, I was just so jazzed I almost wanted to run,” Emily said, coming back to my side quickly.
Almost everyone else had already left. The auditorium felt a lot emptier now.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “Now that we’ve got this behind us.” I licked my lips, wondering if nerves or all the talking I’d already done that night had made them so dry. “What are we going to do about us?”
“What do you mean?” Emily looked up at me, confused.
There were still a few people leaving the auditorium, and her dad was talking to the members of the council that were still there. I pulled Emily gently off to the side so we could be a little more private.
“I mean, I don’t want you to leave,” I said. “I don’t want you to just go back to Houston. Not tonight, and I guess not in general.”
“There’s still a lot to do here,” she said. “I’m definitely not going to stay in Houston all the time. I’ll be back at least once or twice a week.”
“And what about tonight?” I smiled slowly. “Do you have to go home tonight?”
Her cheeks pinked up and she grinned. “No, I guess I don’t.”
I leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips, reaching around to the small of her back to press her against me. It had been a few days since the last time we’d had the kind of privacy we’d need to have sex again—and then, too, we’d been busy with the plans and trying to make something happen.
I pulled back when things started to intensify between us, and my lips weren’t dry anymore. “I think we could make it to the barn, if you’ve got the inclination,” I said.
“Em! There you are.” Martin’s voice cut through the air.
“Hey Dad,” Emily said, maneuvering so she could cover up the fact that I had already started getting hard, but at the same time making it look totally innocent between us. “What’s up?”
“Well, now that Jacob isn’t going to be managing this project, and we’ve got the go-ahead to do things this way, I’m going to need someone to be based in Mustang Ridge to oversee things,” he said. “I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming you’d want to be at the top of the list for that, am I?”
“I would love to! Oh, wow—thank you, Dad,” she said.
I reached out and squeezed her hand lightly.
“I just wanted to catch you before you had a chance to leave—I’m actually taking Lena into Houston to show her a good night.” He looked at me significantly. “I’ll make sure to have her home first thing in the morning.”
I almost snorted.
“In that case, I might just stay here for the night,” Emily said.
“I guess we’ll all see each other in the morning, then,” I suggested.
Martin looked at me for a moment and then half-smiled. “Let’s meet up for breakfast at the diner.”
I nodded, and then Martin left us, to take my mom to the big city. I pulled Emily close to me again, to kiss her on the lips. We’d have the house all to ourselves—and that was definitely something I wanted to take advantage of.