"I'm simple man, Annie. I have you and I have lemon squares. There's not much else I could ask for." Jackson sat back, his knee bumping mine as he spread his legs. "But there's one other thing I've noticed," he said under his breath, his gaze straight ahead as the council members took their seats. "Your tits are falling out of that dress."
I'd taken Brooke's advice and changed into a yellow sundress printed with blue pineapples, one with a deep v-neck. "Oh, you noticed that?" I asked.
A growl sounded in Jackson's throat as he folded his arms over his chest. "This is going to be a long meeting."
Mrs. Ball steppedup to the podium. There was a Mrs. Ball in every town, I was sure of it. She lived in everyone's business, found enjoyment in nothing, and didn't appear to age. She was elderly when I was a little kid—back when she gave popcorn balls as Halloween candy—and she was elderly now but didn't look a minute older than she did thirty years ago.
"There is an urgent need for a stoplight on my street," she announced, waving a spiral-bound notebook as she spoke.
"A stoplight," Owen repeated.
"It's necessary," she continued. "I've been watching the stop sign at the end of my street for the past month and I've written down the license plate numbers of each car that's failed to come to a complete stop. Thirty-four license plates. That's how many cars I've spotted rolling past the stop sign inone month."
Owen stared at her for a beat, then said, "A stoplight would involve hiring a surveyor to gather data on the intersection and assuming the surveyor agreed with your assessment, the public works department would dig up both Willis Point Road and Long Cove Way to run the electrical and install the proper posts. I'm talking about weeks of construction where access to your street would be limited. Once that was finished, you'd have the glare of a stoplight coming through your windows night and day. Is that what you want? Is that how you'd like us to address an otherwise safe intersection?"
Mrs. Ball paged through her notebook for a moment. "Then I'd like to know how the town plans to address the lawlessness on Long Cove," she said with a sniff. "It's clearly out of hand."
Owen shifted his stare from Mrs. Ball to Jackson. "I'm certain the sheriff will put the appropriate resources into the issue," he said. Jackson nodded in agreement. "Anything else, Mrs. Ball?"
"Not tonight," she replied. "But I'll be back next month."
"I would expect nothing less," Owen said. He glanced to the clock and made a note on his pad. "Meeting adjourned."
With that, Denise Primiani swiveled around to face us from the next bench. Her gaze swung between me and Jackson, back and forth, a knowing smile pinned on her lips.
Like most of the people at this meeting, I'd known Mrs. Primiani my whole life. I'd been close friends with her daughters when we were younger, before they moved away. She loved true crime stories. Couldn't get enough of them.
Like most people at this meeting, Mrs. Primiani was reading all the way into Jackson's choice of seats. The only difference between her and everyone else was that she was a teacher at same junior high where my mother and sisters taught.
"How are your parents doing, Annette?" she asked. "I haven't seen your mom since school ended. Is she having a good summer?"
Well…shit.Now, I was going to have to tell my family about Jackson.
"Oh, you know," I said, nodding unnecessarily. "She's good. Enjoying the time off."
I was smiling but a pit of dread opened in my stomach at the notion of announcing my relationship with Jackson to my family. That required an uncomfortable sequence of events where I told Jackson about my very nutty, very judgey family, then told my family about Jackson, and also managed to avoid presenting him at my mother's Sunday dinner table for inspection and interrogation.
Those dinners were ridiculous. There was no singular reason why they reached the level of insanity that they did but that was how it went when my mother and sisters were together. They were loud and a little mean, and they fed off each other, every opinion bolder and stronger than the one before.
As a kid, I'd spent most of the meal ignoring the spirited discussions they carried on, focused instead on the book I'd snuck in and hid under the table. They preferred it that way. I'd always been too young to understand or I didn't know the people or topics being discussed well enough to comment. They made sure I knew that. They liked to keep me in my place.
Now that my sisters were married and had kids and teenagers of their own, the dinners were different. Still spirited, still ridiculous, but bigger and somehow louder. Still a little bit mean. Since opening the shop, I'd made a point of staying open on Sundaysandmanning the counter for the singular purpose of avoiding those dinners.
"And what have you been up to this summer?" Mrs. Primiani asked, shooting another purposeful glance at Jackson.
"Jackson Lau," he said, extending his hand. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced."
Goddammit. I tried my hardest to fight off a grin but lost that battle, smiling down at my lemon squares. Of course he'd take that opening.
"Jackson, this is Janice Primiani. She lives down on Old Sheepscot Point," I said gesturing between them. "Mrs. Primiani meet Jackson Lau, our new sheriff."
I didn't blame him. We were sitting here in front of all our neighbors, as official as a Facebook relationship status update. He had no way of knowing the connection between Mrs. Primiani and my mother and sisters, or that I was extremely conservative about the information I shared with my family.
"Looks like this sheriff has a sweet tooth," Mrs. Primiani said, grinning at my nearly empty plate of lemon squares.
"When it comes to Annette's baking, I certainly do," he replied. "You should try one."
She shook her head, scrunched up her nose. "Oh, I couldn't. I gave up sugar."
