Page 59 of Dangerous December
Elana stood and picked up her envelope. “I am sorry, but I need to help Cody with his homework. Excuse me, please.”
A hush fell over the group after she left the room, then Reva cleared her throat. “I hope she isn’t trying to move out too quickly. She has a lot of responsibility, with Cody to take care of. Here, we watch him for her so she doesn’t need to worry about babysitters.”
Carl nodded. “I’ll miss that little guy if he moves on.”
“Dev and I will talk to her,” Beth said quietly. “I know we all want her to make the right decision.”
“So as far as the rest of you go, how are you doing?” Dev leaned back in his chair.
“I’ve put in three more job applications, but nothing so far. Just because I’m almost fifty-nine with a few little heart problems, they see me coming and imagine the worst,” Carl grumbled. “I’d put in twice the work most of those young kids would—no work ethic in any of them, these days.”
Beth tapped her pen against her lower lip. “I would’ve thought that you’d receive long-term disability, since you were hurt on the job.”
“The railroad said I can’t prove I was, and the pension I get right now isn’t enough to live on.”
“Did you have a lawyer work on this?”
“With what? I didn’t have any money.”
“That’s going to be my next project, Carl.” Beth jotted a note on her tablet. “I’ll look into legal assistance options and see what we can do.”
“My former brother-in-law does some pro bono work, but usually for city employees who have been wrongfully fired,” Reva said. “I can ask him if he could handle this or would know someone with the right experience.”
“Fantastic. Between the two of us, maybe we can come up with something.”
After a moment, she looked up. “How about you, Reva? Is there any way we can help you?”
“First, I want to tell everyone how much this place and your friendship have meant to me over the past few months, while I’ve been trying to decide what to do.”
Reva pressed her lips together. “As you all know too well, I’ve had a hard time getting back on my feet since my husband died. His death and the revelation about our financial picture were a blow, to say the least.”
Carl scowled, his lined face drooping into bulldog wrinkles. “I’d like to give him what-for.”
“But it was my fault, too.” She toyed pensively with her pearl necklace. “He never wanted me to ‘worry my pretty head’ about our finances, but that was a big mistake on my part. No woman should be as ill-informed as I was for so many years. I just never expected...well, that’s getting to be an old song, isn’t it?”
“Anyone would struggle with the losses you’ve faced,” Beth said. “Seems to me that you’ve handled everything with a lot of grace.”
“And prayer. It’s sad to think that I might have been neglecting that part of my life all these years. It took these troubles to remind me that I don’t need to rely only on myself.”
Dev looked up from the notebook in front of him. A faint, wry smile touched his mouth. “And that helped.”
“In subtle ways, and in concrete ways I couldn’t have imagined. Like old friends, calling out of the blue to be supportive. Chance meetings and the newspaper articles that I’ve come across that speak to my situation. I’ve had a growing sense of peace that everything, somehow, will work out. And last night, I got a call from my cousin down in Orlando.”
Carl leaned forward. “And?”
"We barely exchange Christmas cards, and I hadn’t talked to her inyears.Yet she thought to call...and this morning, I got an e-mail from an old acquaintance.”
“That’s nice, but...”
“My cousin wants to talk to me about coming down to manage her clothing boutique. Gerard is in Michigan, and asked if I’d be interested in helping him run his insurance office.Twopossibilities.”
“That’s wonderful.” Beth smiled at her. “What do you think?”
“Just having options gives me a feeling of hope. But I’d rather stay in this area, if I can. I’ve been reading the advertisements all along, afraid to try for the jobs that intrigued me the most. Now...what do I have to lose? It won’t be so devastating if I’m turned down, because now I have a fallback plan.”
Beth thought about her own dream of a youth center in the empty building next to the bookstore. If she ever got the program started, it might someday become self-supporting, with the right kind of church and community support.
Eventually, it might require a director with good fundraising and people skills. Someone like Reva, who had been well-entrenched in the community all her adult life.
