A pause then as she looks at him and he looks at her and neither looks away.
He clears his throat. “But among other things, you were right about the dam. The dam belongs to Bourne. The decision as to what to do with it is ours. If it’s leaking, if Belsum needs it repaired to get up and running, we’ve got the chance to answer a question I only ever got one shot at answering. And that time I chose wrong.”
“What question?” Nora’s trembling.
He gets down on one knee, holds the tiny box up to her. “Say no.”
She’s half-laughing, half-crying again. “Omar Radison, you’ve made me the happiest woman in the world.”
“Open the box,” he says.
She does. Inside is a piece of paper, origamied to fit. She unfolds and unfolds and unfolds until it lies flat. The deed to the dam. Witnessed by Hickory Grove. Built perhaps at his behest. But inarguably, unambiguously, notarized right there in black and white as belonging in its entirety to Bourne Town Council and Municipality.
“You mashed it all up!” Monday shrieks.
“It’s a copy.” Omar’s eyes do not leave my mother’s. “This one’s only for dramatic effect.”
She hugs it to her chest. “And sentimental value.”
“Sentiment is for the past.” He says it very softly because by now he is standing quite near her.
“This is from the past,” she points out.
“No”—his eyes are shining—“this is for our future.”
Her eyes are shining too, and when I search them I see that she can’t quite believe it, this promise of a future. But I see that she can’t quite not believe it anymore either, that her permanently reined-in expectations are slipping their leads, taking first tentative steps, then running wild.
One
The plan is simple. All we have to do is wait, which should be easy since we’ve been waiting all our lives, but you’d think I would have learned by now: nothing is easy.
It would be nice to march over to the library and wave the deed to the dam in Nathan Templeton’s face, and he would know we knew and had him beat. Now that we know permission is ours to withhold, we’ll never let him repair the dam. Maybe it’ll leak, then crumble, and Bourne will flood and drown, but at least then we’ll be cleansed and reborn and returned to our rightful state via the removal of the barrier that started it all. Realizing that’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make, a sacrifice Belsum has forced us to make, a sacrifice Belsum has made less of a sacrifice—there is not much Bourne left to save—Nathan Templeton will give up in defeat and slink off in shame, never to darken our doors again.
We can’t do that, though. Because he can’t know we know.
The reality is disappointingly less dramatic. First, we have to wait ten days. Then, on the twenty-second, when they try to start repairs, Russell will file the injunction to make them stop working on Bourne infrastructure without Bourne approval. Then we’ll wait some more while Belsum scrambles to do whatever they’re going to. Maybe a judge will finally be persuaded they’re evil when we show how they were trying to keep our own dam a secret. Maybe a judge will finally be persuaded by the proof we have at last that the effluent was not an accident but something Belsum knew and took measures to hide going in. Or maybe March will prove too long a delay, and fighting our injunction will prove too tiresome, and Belsum Chemical will decide Bourne is more trouble than we’re cheap and move on.
The waits—ten days till the twenty-second, then waiting to see what they’ll do in response to the injunction, then waiting to see what happens after that—feel torturous, but actually, they’re the best thing because the reality is once he knows the plant’s not reopening, Nathan Templeton will take his family and go back to Boston. So, hard as it is, all this waiting is really a blessing. The plant will not reopen, but no one will know it, so all the bad things that are going to happen when everyone does—there will be no new jobs after all, no influx of customers for new shops and restaurants, and, worse than any of that, River will leave and I’ll never see him again—won’t happen yet. As Elmer Grove would say: win-win.
The worst part of this plan though—the part it hinges on—is keeping it a secret. We cannot squander our head start. Russell’s injunction has to be a surprise to Belsum, a shock even. We want them scrambling and wrong-footed and delayed and behind and outsmarted. No one knows we know about the dam, neither who owns it nor Belsum’s secret plans to repair it before we realize we can say no, and we have to keep it that way for as long as possible. We can’t tell anyone, not even River. Mirabel says especially. Especially not River.
“We don’t keep secrets from each other,” I say, and she laughs, I think unkindly. “Besides, he’s on our side.”
“He is sixteen,” her Voice says. We are lying in the dark in bed waiting for sleep to come.
“So?”
“Young,” her Voice says.
“We’re sixteen,” I remind her.
“Yes.”
“He spied on his father, gave us those emails, got me into the plant. He’s been helping us.”
“So—”
“So he deserves to know what’s going on.” But she wasn’t finished yet.
“—far.”
“You think he’d betray us?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t understand. He wouldn’t do that to me. He l-likes me.” I trip over the l because I was about to say “love.” “We tell each other everything.”
“We tell each other everything.” Monday, from out of the darkness on the other side. I didn’t even know she was awake. “And sometimes I do not like you.”
“We’re sisters. That’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s different with boyfriends.” Oh, what that word feels like coming out of my mouth. Even in the dark, I can see it rising to the ceiling, like a balloon, that buoyant but mostly that joyous, that celebratory.
“Don’t tell him,” Mirabel’s Voice warns, back where we started.
So I hold my tongue, guard our secrets. I wait seven days.
And then I tell River anyway.
I tell him because of what I told Mirabel. He’s on our side. He’s been helping us, helping me. This is his victory too. I tell him because I do not want to keep it—or anything—from him. I trust him. I know he will be thrilled for us, like Russell, like Omar. I tell him because the weather is turning for good, and the cold is coming for real now. There will be snow. I want to drink hot cocoa with my boyfriend and hold his hand while we watch it fall.
So I tell him. I tell him not to tell anyone. I swear him to secrecy. He promises. He crosses his heart and hopes to die. He thanks me for trusting him. He pulls me to him and whispers into my hair that he would never betray me. And that might be the best feeling of all—trusting, having faith—better than the kissing, better than the sex, better than the magic.
Briefly.
Two
It is November 21, so there is only one night left to wait, and we are eating dinner, and the doorbell rings, and Mama’s face looks happy, and I can guess that is because Omar has come to visit twice since he brought over the deed to the dam, and that makes me feel squiggly because Mama hated Omar until very recently. And happy and hate are opposites. But when Mab opens the door, the person on the other side is not Omar. It is Nathan Templeton.