“I can’t believe they weren’t willing to put this off until tomorrow,” Norah said. “We’ve been back in town, what? An hour and a half?”
“I don’t set the schedule. I just show up when they tell me,” Cam said, as they strode across the town green for a City Council meeting.
“I still don’t understand why they wanted me there.”
“Don’t look at me. I’ve been in Chicago with you. It’s not one of our regularly scheduled meetings. Nobody even sent me an agenda. Maybe they want you to liaise in your official capacity.”
Norah scowled. “I could liaise a lot better if I were unpacked and settled. And if I’d slept since December.”
“Yeah the last three weeks haven’t so much maintained our original impression of Wishful being a sleepy little town. On the plus side, nobody looking at you would know you’d been driving for the last seven hours.”
Fifteen minutes locked in his bathroom and she’d erased the fatigue from her face and done something with her hair that made her look neat as a pin and ready for the boardroom. It was a fascinating form of female magic.
She brought a self-conscious hand to the twist at the base of her head. “Thank God my suits were in a box at the back of the truck.”
“You shouldn’t have worn a suit.”
“Without knowing exactly what they want me for, a suit is a safer option. It’s always better to be over-dressed than under-dressed. Besides, it was this or jeans, and I’m not going before the rest of the City Council in jeans. Especially not at what is evidently a public session.”
“Yeah, but I won’t be able to pay attention to a thing for imagining getting you out of it.”
She slid him a look that was part exasperation, part heat. “Behave.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” He tugged open the door to the courthouse.
The halls were empty other than the security guard, George Buckley, one of Violet’s brothers. An easy smile split his dark face. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks, George. How’s it looking in there?” Cam asked.
He and Norah walked through the metal detector, collecting their stuff on the other side.
“Pretty good crowd for a mid-afternoon session.”
“Hopefully it’ll be a quick one. It’s been a long day.” Cam escorted Norah to the main door of the courtroom. “This is where I leave you. I’ve gotta go in the other door.”
“Where should I sit?”
“Somewhere down front.” Cam kissed her quickly, resisting the urge to linger. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Norah stepped through the door. Cam smiled to himself.
“She suspect anything?” George asked.
“Not a thing.” She wasn’t gonna know what hit her.
Cam hurried down the hall to join the rest of the City Council and his mother at the front of the courtroom. It wasn’t as full as it had been for the vote on the special use permit, but still the floor level benches were pretty packed. Norah had found a spot on the second row beside Miranda and Piper. As Cam slid into his seat beside Ed, his mother rapped her gavel and brought the session to order.
“Thank y’all for joining us this afternoon. We’ll jump straight on in. The forensic accountant has finished her investigation. The former City Planner did, indeed, embezzle $124,000 from city accounts over a period of several years. He has failed this city and is currently awaiting trial.”
That spawned considerable murmured comment from the peanut gallery, but they quieted as Sandra continued. “The City Council has conducted its own investigation into how this egregious crime remained undiscovered for so long. Without getting into the long details, it boils down to antiquated record keeping and a perfect confluence of circumstances, such that those responsible for oversight were lax in their duties. I take responsibility myself for not being more diligent upon my return to office after my cancer treatment. That being said, a number of changes are being made moving forward to prevent something like this from ever happening again, not the least of which is a brand new electronic accounting system designed by Jay Quimby.”
Sandra went on a bit longer about the rest of the changes and reiterated a policy of transparency to prevent mismanagement of city funds. “Further details are available for those who are interested. However, none of this is why we called this special session of the City Council.”
As his mother surveyed her audience, Cam thought she’d been taking lessons from Norah on how to play the crowd.
“Four months ago, our town was struggling financially. Yes, at the civic level, some of that was because of the criminal actions of the City Planner. But even without that added burden, Wishful has been in a long-term economic decline for the last two decades. It seemed that the only way out of that was the recruitment of and dependency on some larger industry, like the ones the town was built around. When no opportunities of that nature became available, we were susceptible to the lure of promises made by GrandGoods, a big box store that would’ve changed our way of life.”
She paused and shot a look in his direction. “Councilman Crawford was the lone voice of dissent. He made the unpopular choice, the hard choice, to do whatever he could to protect that which we hold dear. And in doing so, he brought in the assistance of a young woman with more grit, determination, and hope than any single person I’ve ever met.”
Cam watched, fascinated and amused as Norah actually sank lower in her seat, as if to shrink from all the eyes turned in her direction.
“She almost single-handedly revived the Chamber of Commerce. She was the primary force behind the founding of the citizen’s coalition. At her request, we had a literal army of volunteers help makeover Main Street. As a result of her tireless efforts, we’ve seen a display of community spirit unrivaled in the last twenty-five years. Her Shop Local campaign has brought a forty percent increase in local revenues since its inception, and that number only seems to be going up. She is the brain behind the YES Cap campaign and one of the reasons this referendum saw record numbers at the polls. And, as if all that weren’t enough for an entire team of people, when all seemed lost and everyone else gave up, she kept the faith and gave us the answer for how Wishful can save itself, complete with linkage to the resources to enable us to do exactly that. Norah Burke, can you please join us down front?”
Cheeks faintly flushed, Norah rose from her seat and edged into the aisle, looking a trifle embarrassed as she made her way through the gate from the visitors’ gallery to stand in front of the Council.
“Norah, you have given of your expertise, your time, and your personal resources, all in the name of supporting this town you’ve decided to make your own. We owe you a debt that can never be properly paid because you cannot put a price on the gift of hope. But we came together today to honor you and your endless contributions to Wishful.”
Sandra stepped down from the bench and brought her the engraved plaque, while the room erupted with applause. Cam’s heart fairly burst with pride as Norah accepted it and then his mother’s embrace. Sandra gestured to give Norah the floor.
With a helpless look at the audience, Norah lifted a hand to her cheek. “For probably the first time since any of you have known me, I don’t know what to say.”
A faint ripple of laughter swept through the assembly.
“Thank you. I’m so honored. But really this doesn’t belong to just me. I might’ve had the ideas, but I couldn’t have executed any of them without help from all of you. The success isn’t mine, it’s Wishful’s.”
“Well, we’re glad to hear you say that,” Hank said.
Norah turned back to face the Council.
“See, there’s the matter of the vacancy in the City Planner’s office,” Grace said.
“And we can’t think of anyone better suited to the job than you,” Ed said.
Norah blinked. “You’re…offering me a job?”
“Normally we’d do a formal interview, get references, the whole shebang,” Sandra said. “But in this case, your actions over the last four months more than answer all our questions. You’re smart, dedicated. You’re above reproach. And you consistently put Wishful first. That’s exactly what we want in a City Planner. We realize we’ve put you on the spot, so you don’t have to give an answer right now. Take some time to think about it.”
She turned her gaze on him, and Cam knew her answer even before she spoke it. “I don’t have to think about it. Yes. There’s nothing else I’d rather do.”
~*~
“You totally knew they were going to do that.” Norah poked an accusatory finger in Cam’s arm.
He grinned, unrepentant, and draped an arm around her shoulders. “I totally did.”
“Well, I’m glad I wore the suit since I was up there in front of all those people.”
“You could’ve gone up there in shorts and a t-shirt and it wouldn’t have diminished your accomplishments or how much we all appreciate them.”
“Yeah, but the suit looks better in pictures.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“It was your idea to make me the new City Planner, wasn’t it?”
“I might’ve put the bug in their ear when we were discussing qualifications for the position. But I couldn’t have gotten you hired all on my own. The decision was unanimous. No contest. No discussion. You were made for this job.”
“I think maybe I was.”
“C’mon, I want to show you something.” Cam steered her across the green, toward the fountain. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that the honors don’t end with just a plaque.”
“They don’t?”
“Nope. You’re getting a burger named after you at Dinner Belles. And Cassie is creating a drink in your honor for permanent inclusion on the menu at The Grind. The General Burke.”
Norah gave a happy sigh. “You know, I have no idea what cockles are, but that just warms my heart all the way down to them.”
“Pretty sure that makes you an official local. There’s no getting rid of us now. We’ve got our hooks in you too deep.”
“You had your hooks in me from day one. You and your silly dog.”
“It was a masterful plan, if I do say so myself.”
He pulled her to a stop beside the fountain, keeping her tucked close against his side. “What do you see?”
She looked but couldn’t tell what it was he wanted her to home in on. “Did they clean it?” As far as she could tell, it still had the same patina of age it always had.
“Look closer.”
Her gaze skimmed the edges, the base, the pool of water with its glinting treasure beneath. “I still don’t know what you want me to see.”
“Okay I’ll chalk it up to the fact that you’re wiped out. Here’s a different question. What do you hear?”
Norah listened closely. A faint breeze rustled the leaves of the massive oaks shading the green. Voices from people walking down Spring Street and Main carried back on the wind. And underneath it all, the soft burble of…water.
“It’s running!” She could see it now, the faint trickle of water. Not a lot, but something where there’d been nothing for years.
“It is. I noticed it before we left for Chicago last week.”
“Did they finally figure out what was wrong with it?”
Cam tugged the plaque from her hand and set it aside, pulling her to sit beside him on the fountain ledge. “Nobody’s touched it.”
“But it’s running again. Why would it just spontaneously start up?”
“I have a theory.” He said it in a tone that clearly expected skepticism.
“Lay it on me.”
“Well, actually it was sort of your theory. Do you remember the day we made our wishes?”
“Sure. Hard to forget when I got my wish.”
That distracted him. “What was it?”
“For my time here to show me what my path was, what I was meant to do. I’d say I pretty much got my answer today.”
“I got the wish I made that day, too.”
“Yeah? What was yours?”
“I wished for a miracle to save Wishful. We got you.”
Norah’s heart squeezed. “Cam. You are the sweetest thing.” She leaned in, brushed her lips over his.
“Don’t know that it’s sweet if it’s just plain truth.”
“Flatterer.” She settled back. “So what was your theory? Or my theory. Whatever.”
“You said that the fountain dried up as hope in Wishful did. Over the last four months, you gave that back to us. You saved us in more ways than one. Me most especially.” He leaned over and trailed his hand through the water, scooping a coin up from the bottom.
“What are you doing? You can’t do that. That’s somebody’s wish.”
“Sure I can. It’s mine.” He turned his hand over to show her. But it wasn’t a coin in his palm. It was a ring. Diamond, flanked by sapphires and filigree. Gorgeous and sparkling in the late April sun.
Norah’s throat closed up.
“I could’ve asked you that day at my grandmother’s, but it was always meant to be here. Source of hope. Font of wishes.” He took her limp hand in his and smiled. “I love you. I want to spend the next fifty or sixty years showing you how much while we build a life and a family together and keep right on saving this town, side by side. Say you’ll grant me my wish and be my wife.”
She swallowed hard. He was so steady, so perfect. So hers. It was worth every hour of work, every moment of frustration and doubt, every turn in her life, because all of it had brought her here, to him.
When she couldn’t make a sound, she just nodded. Cam’s fingers were warm and sure as he slipped the ring on her finger, then raised it to his lips.
Norah still didn’t make a peep. She was positive if she opened her mouth, she was going to burst into happy tears.
“Wow, speechless twice in one day? That’s got to be a new record.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “Don’t get used to it.”
He cupped her face and drew her close. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I love you so much, Campbell.”
When he kissed her, she tasted his smile, and it was sweet, as life was sweet.
“Let’s go home before anybody sees us.” He pulled her to her feet.
“What?” She laughed.
“Once this hits the wind, it’ll take us five hours to cut loose, and I’ve got a mind to celebrate.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
As they headed for his truck, Norah looked around at the town she’d adopted as her own and reflected that life would never be dull in the place where wishes came true.