Rory's eyes widened. “What?”
“You putting Santa’s Village together for the petting zoo was not a test for you to pass or fail to get invited into our family.”
Rory stared at her. Then she shook her head. Then she swallowed hard. “I… um… I didn’t…”
But something about Ellie’s eyes and the way she just watched Rory with kindness and patience and understanding, made Rory finally say softly, “How did you know I felt that way?”
Ellie gave her face a little squeeze, then let her go. She shrugged. “I’ve known a lot of people in my life. All kinds of people. People who want all kinds of things. The ones who want to do harm or hurt others, who want power, who are driven by greed or selfishness are harder to read. ‘Cuz that’s not natural. That’s harder to get my mind around. But people who want companionship, friendship, home, family, and love? They’re easy. Those people I understand.”
Rory felt her eyes fill and she nodded. “I’m those kind of people.”
Ellie gave her a smile that made the stinging in Rory’s eyes grow sharper.
“Yes, you are,” Ellie said. “But,” she added. “You goin’ inside that jail isn’t about you. It’s about Drew. He wants all of that too and you’re a part of that. So get on in there.”
Rory looked toward the building. “It's my fault he’s in there. Getting involved with me is going to be a mess for him.”
Ellie nodded. “Yeah. Probably.”
Rory had kind of expected something a little more comforting. “Is that okay?”
Ellie laughed. “Have you met my family? Clearly messiness isn’t a problem for me.”
Rory couldn’t help but grin in return.
“But one thing I know to be true,” Ellie went on, “is that you don’t really know what matters and what you care about until you’re willin’ to get messy for it. Be that actually messy—wadin’ into flood waters or the bayou or an accident scene or a fist fight—or emotionally messy—bein’ willin’ to get your heart bruised or be disappointed or angry. Messy is where it all becomes clear.”
Rory swallowed. “So when I walk in there, it’s going to be clear how Drew feels about me.”
“Yep.” Ellie didn’t add any additional comforting words to that.
“You really think that I should saddle Drew with all of my problems?”
“I think if Drew Ryan is the right man for you, once you lay your worries on him, they’ll start to feel a lot less like problems and a lot more like simple bumps in the road. And we’ve all got those. That’s how you test out the shocks on your relationship. The good ones give you a smooth ride the whole way, no matter what bumps you come across. The wrong ones rattle you and make it so you can’t wait to get a new one.”
Rory laughed softly, but she understood exactly what Ellie was saying. In the couple of days Drew had been in town she'd already felt lighter and happier having him to lean on.
Rory let out a breath. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For…putting up with me and giving me advice.”
Ellie waved that away. “Everyone needs to be loved. Some people just need stronger and more stubborn people to do it. That's where the Landrys come in.”
Rory felt her eyes stinging again. Damn, that was so nice. How had she resisted just throwing herself into the middle of this family and begging them to adopt her?
Rory swallowed hard. “I've been a coward. I've let my dad do this to me over and over. I've enabled it every time. Now he came back around, and it got everyone else involved.”
“Listen, the hardest cause to fight for is ourselves,” Ellie said. “Fighting for animals and kids and our families and the climate…those are all noble and easy to get riled up about. But fighting for ourselves is a whole different thing.”
Rory pressed her lips together and nodded.
“It took until now, when your dad started messin’ with the petting zoo and people you loved, for you to fight back,” Ellie said. She leaned in, studying Rory’s eyes. “Because you were gonna fight him, weren’t you? You had a plan.”
Rory knew that the rumor around town was that Ellie Landry always knew everything that was going on. She shouldn't have been surprised that Ellie had figured out that Rory had come up with a way to deal with Roger once he’d started threatening the people and things that mattered to her.
She nodded. “I did. I was going to lure him in with the fake boxes and then turn him over to the cops. But Drew got there first.”
“Well, it’s a start,” Ellie told her. “You’ll get better at standing up to him with practice.”
“You promise?”
“Of course. The first thing is learning that you’re worth it. And we’re going to teach you that.”
Rory couldn't describe exactly what she was feeling. It felt like affection, and she was sure that was part of it, but there was also a sense of gratitude. She'd never had an older woman to give her advice and mentor her, and to just talk to about life. She really liked it. She also knew it would be very difficult to do better than Ellie Landry.
“I’m sorry I almost ruined everything for your family’s petting zoo,” Rory said.
“Nothing’s ruined,” Ellie said. “No one got hurt, or arrested, and the toys are back.”
“But Roger only did that as a warning to Drew.”
“You sure? Seems to me like he’s on the run. Getting the hell away from here before Drew showed up.”
Rory thought about that. They really had come out on top. If Roger had believed that Drew would end up in actual trouble with the Landrys, he hadn’t done his homework.
“I don’t think he’s gone for good, though,” Rory said. “He’ll be around.”
Ellie shrugged. “So are the gators. Mostly we just ignore them. Or we make a deal—we feed ’em and they show off for the tourists. We don’t like ’em, but we tolerate ‘em. Unless they become a nuisance and threaten somebody.”
“Then what happens?”
“We have ’em for lunch.”
Rory laughed. “I guess maybe that’s a good metaphor for how things can go with Roger.”
“Sure.” Ellie nodded slowly. “We can call it a metaphor.”
Rory felt her eyes widen. But she decided not to pursue that branch of the conversation—or the ingredients in Ellie’s gumbo—any further.
“Alright, I'm going to tell everybody who Roger is and what he did and how I didn't stop him. Get it all out in the open.” Rory pulled her phone from her back pocket and opened up her text messages. She quickly typed in a message to Paige and Charlie.
Can you guys come down to the jail? I have something I need to tell you.
Paige was the first to respond, and the message popped up almost immediately.
We’re already here.
Rory looked up at Ellie. “They're already here?”
“Of course. One of us was in jail.”
Rory smiled, warmth filling her. Drew was one of them. So was she. “And you'd all never leave someone sitting alone somewhere, would you?”