“No,” he said, but not unkindly. I couldn’t exactly call Jake friendly, but he wasn’t actively angry at me either. It wasn’t perfect but it felt like progress.
We grabbed a booth and ordered some beers. I ordered one and Jake ordered two. I just assumed he had a drinking problem until a spritely young woman slid onto the seat beside Jake, leaving no room between their bodies.
She looked up at me with sharp brown eyes, making me feel like an animal in a zoo.
“Wait, I know you,” I told her.
“Oh, yeah? Then what’s my name?” she asked.
“You were with Shelby yesterday,” I said. “The girl with the walking tacos.”
Jake’s face fell. “Babe, you got a walking taco without me?”
She put her hand on his wrist. “It sucked. They used black beans. You would have hated it.”
Oddly, that seemed to relax him. “Oh, okay.” He turned to look at me. “Carter, this is my wife, Lila.”
“I’m Shelby’s best friend,” she said, still eyeing me. “And she told me all about you, Carter Allory.”
“Great,” I said, chuckling.
The waitress delivered our beers. We gave her our orders and I took a huge drink to steady myself.
“Nervous about something?” Lila asked.
I shook my head and wiped my mouth. “Not usually, but I feel like you all might have the wrong impression of me. I feel like I keep repeating myself, but I wasn’t involved with all that ugly business with the Whitaker farm. I’m just the guy who’s now in charge of cleaning it up.”
Jake leaned forward. “How are you going to do that?”
“Honestly, I don’t know yet,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons I’m out here checking out farms and talking to folks. I want to see what people need and then see if Allory can help. It’sbeen an uphill battle just to get people to talk to me. Which, by the way, thank you two for treating me like a person instead of the boogeyman.”
“I haven’t formed an opinion yet,” Lila said.
I nodded. “That’s better than hating me, like your best friend does.”
“She has good reason to hate you.” Lila narrowed her eyes.
She proceeded to tell me all about how difficult life had been for Shelby ever since her parents sold their farm to Allory. For her entire life, Shelby had planned on working the family farm. She had gone to school to learn new things to help out and make the farm more successful. Then her parents sold the business without even consulting her.
All that was bad enough, but then, as she was mourning the life she always thought she would have, the people in Ferris turned on her too. They assumed she was a part of the sale, like she had profited as much as her greedy parents did, which wasn’t true at all. Shelby was broke as a joke, according to Lila.
I couldn’t understand why people put the blame on her, but it sounded like they needed someone to take their anger out on, and Shelby had drawn the short straw. Shane, her brother, took some heat, too, according to Lila, but he had never been involved as much with the farm, so he got more of a pass.
Aside from the guilt I felt about what Shelby had been through, I felt even worse knowing it had been my father that caused so much devastation with his callous decisions.
Shutting down the egg farm and the poultry processing plant essentially killed the town. A lot of people moved. Lots of kids, too, which meant the schools in town suffered from major budget cuts. Whitaker Farms had been holding up the entire economy of the town.
It just made me more determined to make things right with Shelby somehow, and I told Jake and Lila that.
“Then maybe you should go up to her farm again,” Lila suggested. “If you’re serious, give it another try. She’s actually really nice when you don’t destroy her entire life.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Last time she pointed a shotgun at me.”
Jake grinned. “Don’t worry. Shelby is a terrible shot.”
I blinked in surprise. “There has to be a story behind that, right?”
Jake just laughed. “That’s a story for another time.”
