Page 20 of Protected By the Grumpy Single Dad
“You know what happens next, right? They drill one hole and suddenly we’re a dot on someone’s energy map. People come in, scrape us out, go home richer to places that don’t smell like diesel.”
“Have you considered there might be benefits?” I hear my voice rise and don’t stop it. “Jobs, Jasmine. Paychecks. People here need work.”
Her mouth opens and closes. For a second, her eyes go damp, and it hits me—the diner, the yellow bars cooling on the rack, the care home fees that don’t pay themselves. “I can’t hand out jobs,” she says, small and honest. “I can hand out flyers.”
“Right now, Ms. Hartley can hand out jobs. Who do you think folks are going to listen to? The woman waving signatures, or the one offering shifts?”
“I’m trying to help the town.”
“You’re trying to preserve it,” I say, and hear how sharp it lands. “I get it. You grew up here. It feels like it belongs to you. But things change.”
“This change is rot,” she says, fiercer than I’ve seen her. “Air and water don’t grow back. Why is it so hard for you to look out a window and see past your statutes?”
“Becausethe statutes exist, and I took an oath to follow them. You and I yelling in a grocery aisle won’t shift a single permit.The sooner we stop playing tug-of-war with a bulldozer, the better.”
We stand there, breathing hard, two stubborn people with a shelf of sandwich bread barrier between ideals. I’m aware, distantly, of a kid with a cereal box staring and a grandma pretending not to.
“Fine,” she says finally, voice knife-bright. “Enjoy your scones,Sheriff.”
She steps aside and I pass, basket heavy, stomach heavier. At the register, the cashier chirps a total. I pay, nodding at nothing.
In the car, I see her reflection in the sliding doors as she exits with her groceries—back straight, jaw set. For half a second, I regret exactly how I said what I said. Then I imagine her at Hartley’s fence again and my blood pressure spikes all over.
So much for a smooth errand.
***
Brick’s where I left him—propped, calm, the couch his command center. I set the plate and a glass of orange juice on the coffee table with more ceremony than necessary.
“Here you go, bud.” I hover, ready to catch him, the plate, the planet.
He leans forward, careful of the cast, and takes a bite. His brow pulls tight. “It’s fine,” he says around the crumb, which is exactly what you say when it isn’t.
“Not good?”
“It’s okay,” he says, too fast. “I thought maybe it’d be from—” He trails off and takes another bite. “Never mind.”
I sit beside him and pretend not to stare while he finishes the scone with grim determination. He thanks me. I go to the kitchen and butter a slice of toast I don’t want.
Somewhere between chew two and three, Riley’s voice from the hospital drifts back:We’ll do better with the equipment checks. That’s on us.I’d thought about lawsuits for a hot second because that’s what people do when they’re scared and angry. Then I looked at my kid asleep under a head wrap, breathing, and decide that surviving counts more than winning. I told Riley we wouldn’t be filing anything. Felt like choosing oxygen.
The next morning, after a night of cartoons and pain meds and me creeping down the hall to watch him breathe like a weirdo, I ask what he wants for breakfast.
“Scones,” he says again, eyes on the ceiling.
“You sure? Variety is the… spice of life?”
He hesitates. “Yeah. But… not from the store.”
“Okay…” I lean back against the counter. “Then from where?”
“My friend George says the best scones in town are from Scotty’s Diner,” he says, naming it like I haven’t been tripping over its shadow for a week.
I know what my face does because his does the kid equivalent of a double-take. “What?” he asks. “You know it?”
“Everybody knows it.” I stall. “You don’t want, say, pancakes from anywhere else?”
“Scotty’s,” he says, unblinking. When he gets that particular note in his voice, there’s no point arguing. It’s how we ended up owning a hockey stick and not a baseball bat. It’s how his favorite shirt is the red flannel his grandma hates because it “makes him look like a gnome.”
