Page 148 of Rags to Royals

Ruby recaps her nail polish. “What do you mean?”

“Mariah and Leah got into it and Mariah must’ve texted him or called. He turned around and came back.” I look at my sister as all of this occurs to me. “He came clean. He admitted to Amanda Brown and Leah Lawton who he really is. That Mariah was right all along.”

Ruby’s eyes go wide. “No shit?”

“Then Henry basically threatened Leah not to say anything. “

Ruby huffs out a breath. “Of course he did. “

“And strangely, when I left, I almost felt like Mariah and Leah had sort of a truce friendship thing going.”

“Friendship? That’s probably pushing it.”

“Yeah. But sometimes when you have a secret with someone, it’s a bonding experience.”

“Do you want her bonding with that girl?”

I lift a shoulder. “Not really. But maybe I wantLeahbonding withMariah.” Mariah could be a good influence on Leah, actually. “Hey, speaking of drama, I ran into Hannah on my way out of the school. She says that you’re spreading some kind of gossipy rumor around about the city council?”

Ruby gets up from the table and goes to the fridge, pulling out the iced tea pitcher. “It’s not a rumor. It’s the God’s honest truth.”

“What’s going on?”

She takes down two glasses and fills them. “I was talking about your program, the moms’ thing that you and Cian are doing, at work. One of the girls told me that they have this thing over in Melton. The city helps with housing assistance for single moms. They help pay rent and house payments and stuff.”

I take the glass of tea from her. “Really?” I’m definitely interested in that.

She reclaims her seat. “Yeah. It’s part of a grant from the state. The city covers a third of the program and the state covers the rest. Single moms can apply for up to three years at a time.”

“Wow. That’s unexpected. Melton is so small. I’d thought briefly about building one of our communities here, but Emerald is almost too small, don’t you think?”

“There are single moms in small towns,” Ruby says with a shrug. “You could just buy a house or two.”

“True.”

“In fact, guess what else I found out?”

“What?” I grin at how excited Ruby looks.

“Melton has this cool community program where some of the older women make frozen dinners to supply to these single moms. Guess where they got the idea?”

I feel a little prickle on the back of my neck. “Where?”

“Diane. She goes to church over there. She told them about what she does with you and the exchange of services. Her little group of friends at church decided they should get together and do that for the single moms in town.”

I stare at Ruby. Diane got a whole community program going because of what she and I were doing? “That’s…”

“Amazing,” Ruby fills in. She takes a drink of her tea. “So anyway, Melton has this whole cool thing going. They help with housing payments, they have a meal program, so the single moms are being supported by the town and the church. So I’m bitching about how nothing is happening here like that in Emerald and why doesn’tourcity council or the freaking church here do something like that and somebody tells me that Kathie Myers applied for the same grant for Emerald last year.”

“Kathy Myers? She was on the city council, right?”

“Yes, left the council early. For “personal reasons”,” Ruby says, putting air quotes around “personal reasons”.

I lean in. “Okay, come on. Tell me everything. Obviously there’s more to the story.”

“There is. Emerald got the grant. But the mayor turned it down. The mayor who goes to church at our daddy's church.Our daddy who doesn’t want single moms getting support. Our daddy who believes in punishing single moms.”

I stare at her as all that sinks in. “You’re telling me that Emerald could’ve had the money to help single moms right here, but our dad, theman of God,talked the mayor into declining it.”

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