Deb turned around. When she saw me, her face broke into a wide smile. “Mclean! Hi! You’re back!”
I nodded, biting back a laugh as she ran toward me, her sock-feet padding across the floor. Partially, this was for her exuberant reaction, but also for the words, newly posted in my absence, on a poster on the wall behind her. NO SHOES! it read. NO SWEARING! NO, REALLY.
“I like your sign,” I told her as she gave me a hug.
“Honestly, I tried to do without the visual,” she said, glancing at it. “But there were scuff marks all over the streets! And the closer we get to the deadline, the more tempers are flaring. I mean, this is a civic activity. We need to keep it clean, both literally and figuratively.”
“It looks great.” It was true. There were still a few blank spots along the edge of the model, and I could tell the landscaping and smaller details hadn’t been put on yet, but for the first time, it looked complete, with buildings spread across the entire surface and no huge gaps left unfilled. “You guys must have been here every day, all day.”
“Pretty much.” She put her hands on her hips, surveying it along with me. “We kind of had to be, sinces, surveyideadline changed and everything.”
“Changed?” I said.
“Well, because of the restaurant closing,” she replied, bending down to flick a piece of dust off a rooftop. A second later, she glanced up at me. “Oh, God, you did know, right? About the restaurant? Because I totally thought, because of your dad—”
“I knew,” I told her. “It’s okay.”
She exhaled, clearly relieved, and bent back down, adjusting a building a bit. “I mean, May first was always ambitious, if I’m to be totally honest. I tried to act all positive, but secretly, I had my doubts. And then Opal comes up here last weekend and says we have to be all done and out, somehow, by the second week of April, because the building’s being sold. I about passed out I was so unnerved. I had to go count.”
I blinked, not sure I’d heard her right as she moved down the model, carefully wiping her finger along an intersection. “Count? ”
“To ten,” she explained, standing back up. “It’s what I do instead of panicking. Ideally. Although sometimes I have to go to twenty or even fifty to really get calmed down.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And then,” she said, taking another step before crouching to adjust a church steeple, “we lost Dave, which was a huge deal, especially since you were already gone. I had to go count and breathe for that one.”
“What?” I said.
“Breathe,” she explained. “You know, big inhales, big exhales, visualizing stress going with it—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off. “Dave. What do you mean, you lost him?”
“Because of the whole grounding thing,” she said. When I just stood there, confused, she looked up at me. “With his parents. You knew about that, right?”
I shook my head. The truth was, I’d felt so embarrassed about calling him, especially since he never showed up, that I’d not ever tried to contact him, even though I knew I should. “What ... what happened?”
“Well, I haven’t heard all the gory details,” she replied, standing back up and stretching out her back. “All I know is they caught him sneaking out one night last week with the car, there was some big blowup, and he’s basically under house arrest indefinitely.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Oh, and the Austin trip is off. At least, for him.”
I felt myself blink. “Oh my God. That’s awful.”
She nodded sadly. “I know. I’m telling you, it’s been nonstop drama here. I’m just hoping we can get this done without any more disasters.”
I took a step backward, leaning against a nearby table as she made her way around the opposite side of the model. So that was what had happened to Dave. All this time I’d thought he’d changed his mind about coming down, but in the end, it hadn’t even been up to him. “So ... he hasn’t been here at all?”
Deb glanced at me over her shoulder. “No, he has. But just in the last couple of days, and only for an hour here and there. They’re keeping him pretty close, I think.”
Poor Dave. After all that time spent toeing the line, doing the time. And now, all because of me, he was right back where he started. I felt sick.
“His parents can’t really take that trip away,” I said after a moment. “I mean, maybe they’ll reconsider, or—”
“I said that, too. But according to Riley, it’s unlikely.” She crouched down, sitting back on her heels, and pressed a loose house down, making it click. “They already decided to use some of the fund to pay off Heather’s car debt, so she can go. There was a meeting about it and everything.”
“A meeting,” I repeated.