I’ve gotta change these settings.
He’d thought it the last time, too. If the media ever wrote about John Hamren, Dev was the first to know. Only, the Google Alerts had become intrusive. He didn’t like that they came in at any random moment. He liked it even less that waiting to read the headline always made him hold his breath. The probability was increasing that, one day, the newspaper story about his biological father would tell him the septuagenarian was dead.
Once upon a time, following the man in the news had been simpler. Dev had been ambivalent about ever wanting to meet him back then. And he was wise enough to know that he didn’t need another father. He also didn’t need a scapegoat or a punching bag or some theatrical scene of reckoning. Only, somewhere along the line, things had changed. Dev had changed. And answers had become everything.
Jon Hamren to be honored by the Smithsonian Museum in November
That’s what the headline read. It went on to flatter the illustrious career of the architecture-world icon. Dev had consumed everything that had ever been printed or video recorded about John Hamren’s career: his rise, his fall, his redemption and everything in between.
It wouldn’t be like last time, he told himself.
The pep talk Dev seemed set on was one he’d given himself before. Showing up to see John Hamren was something he’d done in the past. Only, he hadn’t spoken a single word either time. The first, he’d been too filled with rage he hadn’t expected. The second time, he’d been too timid.
You don’t have time for this.
Dev took an extra second at an empty stop sign intersection to close his eyes against unwelcome thoughts—against the debate he couldn’t have with himself now. The meeting at Laura’s would be sobering enough. He needed the drive to bring him solace. He needed his breathing exercises and folic acid to keep his blood pressure in check. His birthday loomed and he didn’t want to end up like his mom.
“More layoff orders from corporate, those fuckers,” the mill supervisor, Cliff Dawson, reported grimly when the EDC meeting came to order. His voice was so deep, you had to listen hard to hear. He was tall like Dev, but burly. His beard was long and impressively groomed. And he cursed a lot when he was angry or needed caffeine.
A bad storm at the beginning of the season had put a tree through a section of City Hall’s roof. Said roof was still being fixed. Lack of official meeting space was why Dev and the others found themselves in the home office of Sapling’s mayor. Laura Peacock preferred to work from her yurt.
It stood at the edge of her property near the top of Caribou Hill and had been built as a space for her clients. A desk was set up at the base of the circle and a PhD in Consciousness Studies was hung behind it on the latticed wall. Next to said degree was a photo of Laura smiling and clasping hands with the Dalai Lama. Its wooden rafters drew attention to the circular skylight at the center of the roof, which cast good light into the space despite the canopy of forest.
“More layoffs? Are they serious? I thought the plants were doing better.”
Stanley Tran was a Member-at-Large. His comment earned a subtle eye roll from Janice Brewster, retired accountant, town Treasurer and conspiracy theorist at-large. Dev didn’t know why Stanley was surprised. Packard Industries—the company that owned the mills—hadn’t let up on the layoffs for the better part of a year.
“Look, Laura,” Cliff continued. “I know you’ve been helping people find work when they get laid off from the mills … but that can only do so much, and these numbers are getting big. We’ve got more people out of work at this point than we have total non-Packard jobs in town.”
Cliff didn’t need to say anything more. Dev knew better than anybody what would happen when jobs dried up. It would solidify Sapling’s slow decline into obsolescence. The sawmills would sputter to a halt and the people who could would leave. It was a common boom-town problem: the inevitable bust.
“I’ve reworked some numbers,” Dev said, not ready to pull out his laptop and show them his charts and graphs just yet. He wanted to inspire them first. “What if I’ve figured out a way to bring back all the jobs we lost?”
Cliff scoffed. “What are you gonna do? Visit Don Packard with three ghosts at Christmas ’til he regrets being a greedy prick? We’re down here fighting for our lives and I can’t even get a phone call with anyone in New York.”
If anyone had agonized over this, it had certainly been Cliff. The plant workers were his people. He’d reported to work at Number Ten the first day it opened. Back then, he’d been a plucky, young supervisor with leadership potential. Now the top man at local headquarters, Cliff was well past retirement age. No one would have begrudged him for leaving, and yet everyone knew why he stayed. He had the relationships and the temperament. More importantly, he had the trust of his team. He pulled the marionette strings of worker morale.
“Dev has a secret weapon,” Laura announced sagely from her perch atop a folding chair. Her feet were off the floor and she sat in lotus position. She cradled an enormous ceramic mug that Dev strongly suspected she’d thrown herself on a potter’s wheel. Knowing Laura, it could be anything from tea to kombucha to something even stronger because it was five o’clock someplace and Laura was that kind of mayor.
Cliff said nothing and managed not to look completely skeptical even though he was the natural skeptic in the group. Janice, who always preferred solution talk to problem talk, perked up. Laura looked conspiratorial, as if knowing already that Dev’s plan was crazy and that she was totally in. Poor, clueless Stanley was the only one who bothered to ask out loud.
“Well, do you have a secret weapon?” Stanley wanted to know.
What Dev was about to say couldn’t be unsaid. And it couldn’t go beyond this room—not yet—not until he knew he could deliver.
“We need to make an offer to buy the mills.”
6
The Bakery
Shea
“Hey, Hollywood!”
Delilah greeted Shea with a smile and the nickname she’d called her once or twice. It had come on the heels of Shea’s casual mention of her plans after Sapling. L.A. was one of many places Shea would visit once her screenplay was done. Networking with contacts she knew from NYU and hustling to sell her script were par for the course. Where she went from there would be determined by the ranked list of restaurants around the world she wanted to try. Enjoying the freedom to travel was her master plan’s step four.
But step three was finishing her screenplay, which was where Delilah’s came in. The ritual of writing there each morning made Shea happy above all other things. She was convinced that the aroma of warm cinnamon and sugar she inhaled the second she walked into the bakery-slash-coffee-shop lowered her blood pressure and gave her a dopamine rush. The exposed brick, lacquered concrete floors, chalkboard menus and industrial lighting accented with tiny bright succulent centerpieces on crafty tables also satisfied her appreciation for polish and style.
Delilah herself telegraphed added comforting familiarity. She looked more like someone who’d stepped out of an industrial district in Brooklyn than someone who ran a bakery in a Hallmark town. The pinks and blues and purples that distributed perfectly at the tips of her hair over a base of ash blonde put Shea’s subtle dark-blue ombre fade to shame.