“It’s not enough?” She’s smiling with wet eyes.
“Probably not.” He smiles back. “Especially not now that nearly everyone’s dropped off the suit. Especially because this brings in other parties, the Groves, mostly deceased and with whom your beef is not. Especially not after so much time.”
“I can get more emails,” Mab says weakly. “I can look more places. There’s more evidence out there.” She looks at me. “I know it.”
What we three feel is desperate. What Nora and Russell feel is more like goodbye. This is its own victory—maybe the most important one—but we’re not ready.
“The problem is you have all the proof you need of their disregard and their scheming and their willingness to do you great harm. It’s just not enough to take them down or make them stop. However—Hey! Look who’s here! It’s Matthew Pumpkin! Come on over, Mr. Pumpkin.”
Matthew in a pumpkin costume wanders on screen and also lights up to see us, his huge grin mooning larger. He throws his arms wide. “My friends!”
“Do you remember the Mitchells?” Russell prompts his son. “This is Mab, Monday, Mirabel, and Nora.”
“Hello!” he calls cheerfully. “I’m a pumpkin for Halloween.”
“It is November,” says Monday.
“I’m a pumpkin for Thanksgiving.” He waves vine-laced arms at us, shimmies his pillowed orange middle like he’s hula-hooping.
“You’re such a big boy, Matthew.” Nora is smiling the same smile Russell gave us. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Why?” He’s delighted but puzzled.
“Because look what a good job you’ve done growing up.”
She’s teary still but grinning now, Russell too, surrounded by four impatient, awkward, embarrassed kids, looking across too many miles and too many years into each other’s eyes like they are in the same room, which they will never be again.
“However what?” says Monday.
No one has any idea what she’s talking about.
“You said we do not have enough to take them down or make them stop however.”
“However what?” says Russell.
“That is what I am asking you!” Monday shouts.
“No idea. Here’s a thought, though.” Russell’s face changes. “You won’t get any money, and I can’t guarantee Duke Templeton won’t come back, but if all you want to do is stop the plant from reopening, you don’t need to win a lawsuit. Just take away his dam.”
“How?” Nora looks perplexed. My sisters look perplexed. Even Russell looks like he’s still puzzling this out. But all at once, I see it. I see everything.
“He doesn’t own it,” Russell says. “Bourne does. Who knows how he’s planning to get this done—forged paperwork, shady contractors—doesn’t matter. There wasn’t any way for us to keep them from coming back because they own the land the plant’s built on and those extended land-use rights, but we can stop any work he’s doing on the dam simply on account of its not being his.”
Because I was wrong. Duke wasn’t in a rush to get dam repairs underway before winter. Duke was in a rush to get dam repairs underway before anyone thought to look for the paperwork and realized the most astonishing thing of all: that it’s been in our power all along to say no. The land is theirs but the dam is ours, meaning all we have to do is nothing.
“How?” Nora asks again, though in a different tone this time, less incredulity, more wonder.
“We file an injunction to halt work on the dam. You believe that’s scheduled for November twenty-second?”
“Yes,” my Voice and my sisters all answer at once.
“I’ll prepare it now so it’s ready to file the minute construction starts.”
“What do we do in the meantime?” Nora asks.
“Nothing. Keep quiet. Call Omar. Get the deed and whatever other pursuant paperwork.”
“Just like that?” says Nora.
“Just like that,” says Russell.
“It can’t possibly be that easy,” she breathes, “can it?”
“Of course not,” Russell says cheerfully. “They’ll appeal the injunction. They’ll countersue. They’ll go to some judge who owes them a favor and suspend the suspension. But all of that takes time, and we’ll have a head start.”
“And then what?” Nora says.
“And then we’ll see,” Russell promises.
“Trick or treat!” Matthew screams.
“It is November twelfth!” Monday shrieks.
“Bye, Matthew.” Nora gives a little wave.
“Bye, girls.” Russell holds his hands to his heart.
“Bye, Mab, Monday, Mirabel, and Nora,” Matthew sings.
“Bye, Russell,” Nora whispers.
“Bye, Nora,” he says and reaches forward to disconnect.
In all the years, it is the first time I have ever heard them say goodbye.
* * *
She calls Omar.
“Apple Templeton was both right and wrong,” she says without preamble. “It’s true you don’t have what she was looking for. But the answer is in your files.”
A pause while she listens then announces triumphantly, “The dam is leaking.”
Another pause.
“I’m sure a few small leaks are nothing to be concerned about if your goal is just to maintain a nice park and a pretty lake no one would be caught dead swimming in anyway. But if your intention were, say, to reopen a disgraced chemical plant and dump poison into the nearby river, it’s apparently in desperate need of repair.”
This time her face opens into its widest smile as she listens.
“Good question. The person who gives the go-ahead for repairs to a dam is the person who owns the dam.”
Pause.
“Also a good question. The person who owns the dam is you. Us. Bourne.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, he’s at our front door.
He is wearing a tuxedo jacket and shirt and bow tie over jeans and sneakers.
He is holding flowers.
And a tiny velvet box. A ring box.
We are sitting around the kitchen table when he knocks, and she is laughing before she’s even got the door open.
“Omar Radison. Why on earth do you own half a tuxedo?”
“Work-study job at college. Catering and Events.”
“I’m impressed it still fits.”
“Nothing ever changes around here”—he pats his belly—“except my waistline, of course. The pants went long ago.”
She laughs, touches the top of her own pants absently. “And where’d you get these?” She takes the flowers—yellow mums in a pot—with reverence. They are blooming things, after all.
“Donna Anvers grew these herself. A good sign, no?”
“The best.” Her other hand cups her flushed cheek like he’s told her they’ve struck oil underneath the Do Not Shop.
“And you were right, Nora.”
“About what?”
“Everything, probably. You’ve always been right. I’ve known it … Honestly, I guess I’ve known it all along.”