“Um, no. Why?”
“Well maybe you should start. Therapy can really help.” She smiled and knocked her knuckles on their table. “Okay. Have a great day, girls.”
Then Mary walked out, leaving the town girls in her wake.
Chapter 54
After the Lopez campaign scuttled the candidate’s visit to Cedar Falls, For the Win kept making the case that it needed to be rescheduled. Lopez and Stone were crisscrossing the upper Midwest, but mainly hitting the bigger cities with the larger media markets. Dot was convinced that Cedar Falls was key. She saw it in Fletcher’s spreadsheets and felt it in her gut. If Lopez didn’t come to town, she might fall short in the county’s vote tally—and then not only would Kitty, Fletcher, and herself not share in a win bonus, but also Lopez wouldn’t be in the Oval Office come Inauguration Day. Dot kept plugging along, mission-focused and not panicking. Not yet.
August flew by, and suddenly, summer was ending. Cedar Falls was in back-to-school mode.
“Remember these?” Dot turned to Mary and Harper, holding up a box of Crayola 64 Crayons with the sharpener in the back. She set it back and continued pushing their shopping cart down the office supply aisle at Target. They’d come to get basic cleaning supplies but as usual ended up getting sucked into browsing.
“Check these out—washable Sharpies,” Harper said. “I wonder if they work. My mom would have appreciated them, especially when Ernest drew a mustache on my Harry Styles concert T-shirt. I cried for hours. I swore I’d never talk to him again.” She shook her head at the memory.
“My mom was furious with my brothers when they painted my pigtails with a new glue stick,” Mary said. “She made them eat the rest of it.”
“That soundsexactlylike Christine,” Harper said, watching a mother and her daughter going through their supply list. “I love that ‘back-to-school’ feeling. Even as a teacher. Though I don’t have a school to return to.” Her tone was wistful.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Dot said.
“Yeah, that was the creepy headmaster. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Mary said. She maintained Harper should have sued him.
“I’ll say one thing, though—it’s all very expensive.” Dot scanned the prices up and down the aisle. “We were just talking about this on a call with Kitty. Polling shows people are still unhappy about high prices, and they usually take it out on the party in power. It’s the biggest election issue by far, especially when it comes to back-to-school costs. Rose said her kids are overwhelmed by the cost of her grandkids’ fees, too, for sports and activities.”
“Is Senator Lopez pushing that?” Mary asked.
“Trying. We had her make a quick video for social last week, straight to the camera, making her big push for a major education tax credit. It got decent play on the mom sites.” Kitty had been impressed when it went viral and acknowledged Dot’s idea was a good one. “But the president hit her for not having ‘lived experience’ because she doesn’t have children.”
“That’s rich coming from the guy who made so much money in the stock market, he never had to worry about the cost of raising his kids,” Harper said.
“Exactly. We’re trying to show that she gets it, but there’s always more we could do.” Dot picked up a colorful spiral notebook and put it in their cart.
Harper took it right back out and returned it to the shelf. “You have five of these lying around. Let’s keep going before we accidentally spend another hundred dollars on stuff we don’t need.”
“Like this Mediterranean Fig candle?” Mary said, taunting Harper by pulling it out of the cart.
“I actually need that.” Harper laughed and grabbed it out of Mary’s hands and returned it to the cart.
Dot’s phone buzzed and she looked down to find a text from Kitty Bell to her and Fletcher.
“Uh-oh.”
“What’s wrong?” Harper always worried something bad was going to happen.
“It’s from Kitty.” Dot read the message out loud. “Emergency. Hit job coming. Conference call at eight tonight.”
“Whoa. Hit job! Any idea what it’s about?” Harper’s imagination ran wild to the worst scenario.
“Not sure. Must be bad, though,” Dot said, feeling her pulse race a bit.
“Let’s go then,” Mary said. “We can check out and be home just in time.” She took over the cart and headed to the register. “I’ll pour you a glass of wine in a Yeti, and you can pretend it’s water.”
“Love that plan. Make it the one with a straw,” Dot said. Then she replied to Kitty that she’d be on the call.
AT TWO MINUTESbefore eight, Dot pulled her hair into a ponytail and logged on to the videoconference. She thought better when her hair was off her face.
Darn it, Kitty was already there.