Page 38 of The Undercover Billionaire's Baby

We heard the main crowd before we saw them, bubbles of laughter, excited chatter. My heart did a somersault. So many, this early? Had we somehow cross-scheduled with some other event?

“You’ll have to help me,” I said. “If it’s more than fifty. I don’t even have tags for them, I don’t think, past that.”

We rounded the corner, and the square was overflowing, half the town in their jogging pants and ratty old shoes. Alice had beat us to the sign-in table, and was handing out numbers scrawled on yellow legal paper. I pushed through to join her.

“What’s going on?”

“Mrs. Schneiderman’s knitting club,” said Alice. She scribbled another number and tore it off her pad. I snatched it up and gasped. Eighty-six. I’d been expecting twenty, maybe thirty runners. Forty tops. There had to be a hundred here, maybe twice that. I gaped at them, dumbstruck.

“Mrs. Schneiderman… What? Since when does she knit?”

“I don’t know, but she’s in some club. They knit gloves for the homeless. Scarves, and all that. I guess they signed up some of their donors?”

“This is for your store, right?” said a red-faced woman. She was jogging in place already, her number taped to her chest. “I always swing by you and pick up some beach books. Something to stare at to keep the motormouths off.” She made a blah-blah-blah gesture and rolled her eyes. “I’m sick of talking to people. You’d better open up soon.”

I groped for something to say, but no words came to mind.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” the woman said. “I’m only joking. You should do this every year. I love a good run.”

“Thank you,” I said at last, but she was jogging away, joining a group of her summer-guest friends. Dora came loping over, Cathy in tow, and I couldn’t believe it. “You two are running?”

“I am,” said Cathy. “She’s here to cheer.”

Dora pulled out her T-shirt so I could see the slogan — CHEERING SECTION — printed in big juicy letters. “We’ve been talking you up,” she said. “All us old folks. Handing out flyers down by the beach.” She motioned her friends over, all in the same T-shirts, Joyce from the library, Tom and Carl from the auto shop. A whole lot of Mom’s old friends. I felt my eyes prickle.

“Thank you so much,” I said, my throat gone tight. “Oh, this is Brad, if you all haven’t met him. This was his idea, so?—”

The cheering section surrounded us, bathing us in their warmth.

“It really is so good to see you doing this,” said Joyce. “I’d always joke with your mom, how you’re my competition, but the town wouldn’t be the same without you around.”

“Do you have enough water for all these runners?” Dora peered past Brad, up the wide road. “I should call Rex. Have him go pick up more.”

“No need,” said Brad. “I thought we’d be busy. I made sure to grab plenty, just to be safe.”

More runners came up to hand in their pledge sheets, and I took over from Alice, handing out numbers. A lot of the runners were from out of town, but it made my heart swell to see how many weren’t. It felt like half of main street had turned up in their joggers, the other half in bright CHEERING SECTION T-shirts. Everyone I knew was here cheering me on, fighting to help keep Mom’s legacy going.

“They really loved her,” I whispered, half to myself.

“They love you,” said Alice. She nudged me. “We all do.”

“Don’t talk like that. I can’t run if I’m crying.”

We handed out numbers all the way to one hundred sixty, and the start line was buzzing when it was time to go. Alice did the honors, counting us down, three, two, one, GO, and then we were off. I paced myself to Brad as I’d done when we practiced, and soon we fell into our familiar rhythm. I’d thought we’d got fast, with all the morning runs we’d been doing, but we ended up in the middle of the pack. I glanced up at Brad.

“Should we try to run faster?”

“Why?”

“So we’ll win?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I don’t see much chance of that. Besides, we’ve already won. Did you see all those pledge sheets?”

I tried not to let myself get too excited. Some of those sheets would be worth five dollars, a buck per kilometer to join the race. But even if half were that, some of them wouldn’t be. Mine wasn’t, I knew, and Brad’s wasn’t either. None of my neighbors would’ve skimped on their pledging. If the average pledge sheet was worth fifty dollars, we’d clear eight thousand, minus the cost of setup. So, almost six thousand. That would make a dent.

“On your left!” Chester barreled past us. Brad laughed out loud.

“Okay, let’s run faster.”

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