Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I shake my head. “Now I’m going to be the crazy girl who arrived in a wedding dress and tried to get rid of a cat.”
He sighs, but he’s still smiling. “Yeah, there’s no escaping the town grapevine.”
“I suppose it’s nice in some ways.”
“It is?” he says, eyebrows raised.
“You know, people looking out for each other, in and out of each other’s kitchens, asking after each other’s kids and health conditions. It’s a community. I probably don’t need a megaphone. I probably need to tell three people, and the entire town will know about dear old Athena in no time.”
“It’s a community with a long memory,” he says, a look of resentment in his expression I just don’t understand.
“I bet you remember just as well.”
He shoots me a puzzled expression.
“Tell me about Rachel.” I nod to where she’s stacking sugar packets into bowls. Her pencil is back in its rightful place behind her ear. “She seems to know you. But I bet you know her too. Tell me something you remember about her.”
Byron sighs. “I don’t know. Her hair is a different shade of red every week. She never drinks apart from New Year’s, when she really lets loose. One year, the town placed bets on which track on the jukebox would have her dancing on the bar at Grizzly’s.”
I glance over at our waitress, who seems far from the bar-dancing type. “Was it ‘Sweet Caroline’?”
Byron chuckles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “No. ‘Brown-Eyed Girl.’”
“You know, that doesn’t make me like her less. In fact, it has the opposite effect.”
Byron takes a forkful of egg but doesn’t respond.
“They must be really proud of you, though. The local boy who’s bringing jobs and tourists to the area.”
He takes a sip of his coffee. “They don’t see it like that.”
I wait for him to say more. I don’t want to change the subject this time.
“People in towns like Star Falls don’t like change.”
“You think they don’t like the idea of the Club? But you got the planning approvals and everything?”
“Sure. I’m bringing jobs and tourism to a part of the state that’s kind of been abandoned. And the building is respectful to the local area. The building materials have been chosen because they’re locally sourced and sustainable, and won’t detract from the beauty of the place.” He sounds resentful, like he’s trying to convince me he’s done something good. But I’m not the right audience for his argument.
“You’re getting pushback?”
He sighs. “We’re not seeing applications for jobs from townspeople like we thought we would.”
“I suppose people already have jobs.”
“Yes, but a lot of people have to travel to get work. When I was a kid, my best friend’s dad had to travel two hours to get to work. I’ve lost count of the number of times I heard people talking about Aspen and Vail, how the opportunities there sucked the youth out of the town. The Colorado Club is a couple of miles out of town. I’m giving people what they’ve been saying they wanted for decades. Now it’s here, and everyone’s acting like I’m taking something away from them.”
“Taking what away?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Jim says he wants to be able to walk his dog on Club land.”
“There aren’t other places in the area to walk his dog?”
He sighs, moving the food around his plate without taking a bite. “I’ve bought up some of the federal land. Members of the Colorado Club have high expectations around privacy and security. They’re not going to want to come across Jim walking his dog while they’re on a hike.”
“So people in Star Falls think you’ve stolen their land, while you’re trying to buoy the local economy and give people jobs.”
He goes to speak, but I interrupt him.
“You have two issues as far as I see it. First, you need to come to some kind of compromise around land access. There’s no way around it. You’re going to have to give Star Falls residents limited access. Maybe it’s the first weekend of the month or every Wednesday or something, but you’re going to have to let people inside the boundary lines.”
Byron shoots me a look like I don’t understand anything, but I get it. He needs to get his head around the facts.
“It’s not going to be as much of a problem as you think. If Star Falls is anything like where I grew up, it’s not reality people don’t like—it’s the idea that someone might be trying to take away their freedom. If you do open up the land in a limited way, people aren’t going to take advantage. I bet you Jim didn’t walk his dog up there before you bought the mountain. He just likes the idea that he can if he wants to.”
“But I can’t let Jim on the mountain. I just can’t. The members are paying—”