Word had it she was there to write some sort of novel, but she didn’t own the house itself. It belonged to some tech guy from Silicon Valley who’d sold his company for eight figures. From the clothes, to the house, to the privilege of retreating to the mountains to write, all of it smacked of big money. Only, Shea didn’t have the other telltale signs.
For one, she didn’t pay for everything with a Centurion card. She didn’t make inane remarks about how everything in Sapling was “charming” or “quaint.” She made a ton of special requests but was never demanding. She wasn’t glued to her phone, which Dev himself had been accused of in the early days of his return. She didn’t give off that hard-nosed city vibe. Something about her was soft.
“Hey, Dev,” came Hank Bowen’s unmistakable voice, scratchy from cigarettes and course with age. He owned the Ashbrook Motel. He’d owned it so long, Dev had distinct memories of being seventeen years old and taking his prom date there.
“Can I help you find something?”
The way Dev said it to Hank was a lot different from the way he’d said it to Shea. Hank wasn’t the oldest man in town, but he was the most curmudgeonly. Dev squared his shoulders and crossed his arms—a fitting posture, considering that Hank’s favorite thing to do was roll up, talk shit, and drop bombs.
“Palisade peaches.” Hank made no effort to not sound put out, even though he was the one doing the asking. “I assume you’ve got ‘em but where do you keep ‘em? Doris needs six pounds to make her pies.”
It was the tenth request for Palisade peaches Dev had gotten in two weeks. People asking for things he hadn’t seen extra demand for in months was how he found out. Systematically, Big Mart was doing what it had always been bound to do.
“Imagine that…” Dev smiled now, too, only his was smug. “Your friendly neighborhood Big Mart has scaled back yet again.”
That was how the big chain retailers operated: they lured customers away from mom-and-pop stores with low prices until they edged them out. Then, once they had everyone good and dependent, they raised prices and shifted inventory to the items most profitable for them. Most times, that meant cutting out local favorites.
Hank had been one of the hecklers—one of the ones to call Dev crazy for opening The Freshery not three months after Big Mart’s hammer had put the final nail in his predecessor’s coffin. But the Big Marts of the world left the communities they moved into with more processed foods and less fresh produce. Sapling didn’t need to be more of a food desert than it already was.
“The drive to the Big Mart is still worth it, even with what I spend on gas,” Hank shot back. “There’s still more money left in my pocket than if I’d bought from you. Not everyone around here is San Francisco rich.”
Hank said it with venom, as if making a living in San Francisco were the embodiment of evil. Dev had never lived in San Francisco proper. He’d lived in Berkeley and Oakland—the former for school and the latter because it was his favorite place in the Bay. But he couldn’t deny the “rich” part—or at least how it looked.
Dev was an investor, which sounded to people from here like he was made of money. But he was a community investor, which wasn’t so glamorous as that. What money he’d made in the private sector, he’d put to work helping underserved communities thrive. They were riskier investments with return profiles that weren’t nearly as sexy as what you’d see with VC or any other vertical within the project finance world. But there was no convincing people like Hank.
“For real, Hank…can you just not give me shit today? You know I didn’t open the store to get rich. There’s people in town who can’t make the drive, let alone in the winter. Big Mart is twenty-five miles away.”
“All right, all right…” Hank waved his hand in front of his face in a way clearly meant to brush Dev off. “Just point me toward my Palisades.”
He was grateful that Hank relented. Dev was hard enough on himself that he didn’t need anyone else piling on. He had more to worry about than the Big Mart. He’d been in Sapling months longer than expected. Curve ball after curve ball had complicated his economic revival master plan. With every new hit, his vision drifted farther away. He wasn’t even sure anymore that coming back had done much good to solve Sapling’s problems, let alone saved the town from further decline.
“Mornin’, sugar.” Forty years in Sapling and Evie Boudreaux’s voice still carried the lilt of the bayou. The woman hadn’t set foot in Mississippi since she’d left at seventeen. Dev didn’t think twice before abandoning his post for his top girl. A few long strides and he had his surrogate mother ensconced in his arms.
Evie gave the very best hugs. Never mind that he was six-foot-two and she was five-foot-six. Her hugs made him feel like the best kind of little boy: impenetrably safe and infinitely loved. His spirits lifted instantly whenever she came in.
“Mornin’, Evie,” he returned as he pulled back from their embrace, reluctant as ever to let go.
“My shift starts in twenty minutes,” she started in. “But I made you these last night. I know you’re all healthy now, but you’re still growin’.” She looked past him long enough to cast a gimlet eye on his cup of green juice before fixing him with a pointed look. “And you could stand to eat some real food.”
Dev took the proffered cookie tin and cracked open the lid, not bothering to hide his excitement. Evie was an amazing baker—had taught Delilah everything she knew—and might have owned a bakery herself if this hadn’t been the kind of town where most folks defaulted to working in the mills.
“Toffee chocolate chip…” Dev spoke the words as quickly as he identified the confection by smell, all the better to free up his nostrils for another deep inhale. At thirty-four, he sure as hell wasn’t a growing boy anymore. This was a point he wouldn’t argue with Evie, not only because he would lose; he would gladly break from his juice to accept his favorite cookies.
“When are you gonna quit your job and let me spoil you?” Dev asked for about the tenth time. It had always been his dream to take care of Pete and Evie. They hadn’t been wealthy people when they’d taken in him and Delilah as kids. Evie still wasn’t well-off, even with the life insurance she’d gotten after Pete’s heart attack—even though Dev had done for her now and then.
There had never been two better people. When Dev’s own mother had passed, they’d stepped up to foster him and Delilah. If not for Pete and Evie, Dev and Delilah would’ve been separated.
“You know I like working,” Evie proclaimed matter-of-factly before mumbling under her breath. “Don’t know what I’d do all day at home.”
That was something none of them had ever really prepared for: Evie without Pete.
“Come work with me at the store and you’ll see me every day...” he baited.
“You’d prob’ly try to get me to drink that green juice.” She looked genuinely disgusted for a second. “And you know what I’m gonna say—you give me some grandkids to look after, and we’ll talk about me quitting my job.”
Just then, Hank came puttering back up. The sound caused Evie to turn. Dev didn’t miss the narrowing of her eyes a second before she looked away, though Hank hadn’t noticed Evie yet. Apart from her mama bear tendencies to feed Dev, her instinct to protect him was strong.