I gave the signal, and Scarlett heaved the barn door closed.

“If I can get y’all’s attention,” I said, standing up on a milk crate at the front of the barn. If we were going to keep doing these meetings we were gonna need a stage or something.

It was a damn cold night this close to Christmas, but half of Bootleg had shown up. They were huddled up together on the benches trying to keep warm and catch up on all the gossip.

They were too busy catching up to hear me.

“Hey!” Gibson stood up. “Everybody shut up!”

It had the effect of a record scratch, and in seconds everyone was staring at me expectantly. Oh, Lord. Where to begin?

I brushed my hand over Cass’s note tucked in my pocket and cleared my throat. “I’ve called you all here because we have a problem.”

A hand raised in the back. “This about you and Cassidy courtin’?”

“Uh. What?”

Minnie Fae stood up in the second row in her yellow and orange cat sweater. “That’s old news. Also, this is Fluffins and he’s lookin’ for a home,” she said, holding up a cat that matched her sweater.

“Y’all better not have called a meetin’ regarding old news!”

“I’ve known for weeks! Since Thanksgiving at least.”

“Does Fluffins have all his shots?”

“How did y’all know?” I asked.

About a dozen people piped up at the same time.

“Saw you kissin’ on your back porch when I was walking by at six in the morning.”

“You two were holding hands under the table at the Christmas Carol Singalong!”

“There’s security cameras on Mona Lisa’s coop.”

“Okay. All right.” I held up my hands. “Yes, Cassidy and I are dating.” Or, at least, we had been. We’d both screwed up. Her note yesterday had been dead-on. I’d asked too much of her without proving enough of myself. I’d asked her to step into the gray areas of her job for me without having earned it. Then, when she’d given me what I’d asked for, I turned my back on her. Oh, and then she lost her job over the whole disaster.

This damn mess was bigger than I could fix alone. And I needed the town’s brain power behind me.

“What y’all probably don’t know is Cassidy lost her job yesterday,” I started again.

“Tell us something we don’t know,” Wade Zirkel hollered from the back.

“Anyone know what she said to that snake in the grass Connelly? I heard he was foamin’ at the mouth when she walked out.”

The crowd was getting rowdier and louder.

This was not going well. I was just making a mess of this, too. I looked at my brothers in the front row, who looked concerned and a little annoyed. Jonah shrugged at my silent plea for help. We were all at a loss as to how to fix this.

Gram-Gram stood up on her bench. “Listen up, y’all. That hotshot yahoo detective forced my granddaughter out of her job! And we’re gonna get it back for her!”

“Bootleg Justice!” someone hollered from the back of the room.

It was answered by a chorus of “hell yeahs,” Bootleg Springs’ rallying cry.

“Now, hang on y’all,” I cautioned. “We need to do this the legal way. Connelly’s a cop. We can’t kidnap him and leave him in his skivvies with a thermos of coffee and bear spray in the woods.”

“That only works once or twice,” Marvin Lloyd pointed out. “We need some new material.”

Mayor Hornsbladt stood up. “Can someone run through the facts of the sitchy-ation so we can put on our thinking caps?”

Nadine Tucker rose. “I got this, Bowie. Now, y’all listen up. Here’s how it went down.”

She ran through everything. Connelly claiming Cassidy was a shitty cop. The poorly kept secret of our relationship. The tension between us about her being part of the investigation into our father. Right on up to Cassidy and Connelly’s dust-up at the station and that something she said to him had his face turning the color of a ripe eggplant.

The recap didn’t make me feel any better about myself. I’d pushed Cassidy into a relationship and then basically forced her to share things she wasn’t ready to share. Then I’d abandoned her. Just like I had seven years ago.

I needed to make it up to her. I needed to get her job back for her and then spend the next seven years groveling.

“Damn, son. You done shot yourself in the foot real good,” Mayor Hornsbladt said, tucking his thumbs under the straps of his overalls.

“I’m well aware, sir. I need all y’all’s help in fixing this.”

Thirty minutes later, after a lot of hollering and one cat adoption, we had a rough plan and all the players had their heads together on the details. I didn’t know if it was the recreational moonshine refreshment being passed around, but the plan sounded plausible…and legal.

Scarlett’s suggestions of breaking into Connelly’s house and threatening him to be a better person were summarily scrapped. She was relegated to the official internet searcher for the town elders.

“We aren’t all gonna fit in my El Camino,” Granny Louisa noted.

“We’ll take my van,” Mrs. Varney decided. “Estelle, you’ve got the best eyesight out of all of us. You can drive.”

Gram-Gram stood up again. “Now, let’s talk about how you’re gonna win her back. You need a grand gesture. A real big one.”

“Like spelling out ‘I love you’ in pepperoni rolls.”

“Have you changed your Facebook status to ‘in a relationship?’”

“Maybe you should adopt a cat together!” That suggestion came from Minnie Murkle, who was holding a black cat aloft. I made a note to make a sizeable donation to the rescue’s neutering program.

“Did y’all know that Cassidy told that Connelly fella that he had no right to tell her who she could and couldn’t date?” Bex from the police station said from the second row.

“She did?” I asked, feeling a little lighter in my chest. “Did she say anything else?”

Bex grinned and wiggled her eyebrow ring. “Just somethin’ about how it’s no one’s business if she loves you.”

“How long ago was this?” Gram-Gram wanted to know. “Maybe she changed her mind.”