“And tonight?”
“Tonight I wanted you to see the other side of Walkers Ford.” He thought about how to say this. “I have to assume you’ve failed, that the family, the schools, programs, library, mentors, everything has failed. I can’t afford to be a Pollyanna about this. Small-town life is supposedly Mayberry, but there’s no cushion when things go wrong. We all know Gunther. We knew his wife, how she wore that ring with pride. Some of us were there when he took it off her finger at the hospital. We were there when he buried her. Now it’s gone, probably forever.”
“Like your grandmother’s.”
“That’s different.”
“But the same, because you lost it and you promised her you’d find it. You were eight years old when you made that promise.”
“And now I’m thirty-two, and I still haven’t found it.”
“Why do you keep looking?”
“Because I made a promise.”
“I’d ask you to come in and sit for a while, but something tells me you’re going back out to Tanya’s.”
He looked at her sharply, although perhaps the fact that he’d pulled into her driveway, not his, and left the Blazer running was clue enough.
“She shouldn’t be alone,” was all he said.
Alana nodded and opened the passenger door. “Do you want me to come with you? You shouldn’t be alone, either.”
Air huffed from his lungs, although whether from the direct hit to his sternum or her matter-of-fact statement, he couldn’t tell. Both, probably. Alana Wentworth packed a punch behind that sleek reserve. He desperately wanted to go inside with her, to lose the day in her quirking smile and soft body. “You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
She hummed something quick and soft, then stepped back. Duke peered over the backseat and whined, upset that the humans were separating. “It’s okay,” she reassured him. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And you,” she said with a quick glance at Lucas.
9
THE DAY OF the presentation to the town council passed in a frantic blur. The library was open and nearly everyone in town seemed to want to take a look around before the presentation, so Alana and Mrs. Battle were busier than usual. Cody was still suspended so Alana put him to work scanning his pictures into her laptop and typing her notes into the PowerPoint presentation. As he worked he downloaded an art application and cleaned up the drawings, teaching himself the software as he worked. Between a constant stream of citizens and Cody’s absorption in his work, Alana forgot about her nerves until the last-minute strategy session with Mrs. Battle over supper at her house. Alana flipped open her laptop, then chewed a hasty bite of beef stroganoff while she paged through the presentation.
“You’re ready,” Mrs. Battle said. “Just remember to slow down and make eye contact.”
“I don’t talk faster when I’m nervous,” Alana said.
“Yes, you do,” the old lady said serenely. “And you talk fast anyway, with your city ways. Slow down. Build a picture of what could be.”
“Cody’s drawings are all they need,” she said.
“Cody is a Burton, one step away from juvenile detention or the state penitentiary. His drawings are very, very good, but they’re not going to sell the proposal, not like you will.”
Alana ate another mouthful of stroganoff and tabbed from the Final version to the Rough version. Standing behind her with a pot of steaming corn in her hands, Mrs. Battle watched the slides flicker past. “Slow down,” she said. “My eyes don’t work that fast.”
“What do you think of this?” Alana asked, stopping on the slide that troubled her.
“Well, I don’t really know what to make of it.”
“Cody drew it.”
The whimsical, wistful version of Walkers Ford was visible in the picture to anyone who knew the town. Main Street’s brick buildings leaped from the page, flanked by the school, the Y, the restaurant district housing the Heirloom. Houses spread out from the center then lapsed into the surrounding prairie. Brookhaven’s sharp edges and gleaming glass marked the farthest edge of town, but what really captured the town’s essence was the artfully rendered people. Some were recognizable, like the high school principal, Mr. Walker, and his wife; the town’s attorneys, Keith Herndon and his father; police officers gathered around the distinctive Blazer Lucas drove. Gina stood outside her café, and several people strolling on the Main Street carried Heirloom coffee cups. But all motion swirled subtly to the center of the drawing: the library. Alana’s heart had seized when she saw the picture, realized the story Cody was using art and passion and feeling to tell. This is the center of our town. Not the restaurants or the shops or the administrative buildings. This place we need to commit to, or we’ll lose our center.