Page 49 of Story of My Life
“Seriously, Emilie? Those were fresh from the oven,” Wesley complained.
“Now,thatwas uncalled for,” Zoey said, taking a menacing step toward Emilie the Enemy. I was feeling panicky and hungry. I didn’t know what to do. When it came to confrontations, I was better at the kind that happened on the page.
A tall white guy with no butt to hold up his cargo pants wiggled his way through the crowd wielding an iPad. “Press coming through! Make way for the First Amendment, people.” He shoved the iPad in my face. “Garland Russell, award-winning journalist for the Neighborly app. I’d love a quote from you, Ms. Hart.”
“What’s the Neighborly app?” I asked.
“A quote about what?” Zoey demanded at the same time.
“About the tragic death of our beloved town mascot, Goose, the majestic bald eagle, at your hands,” he said, blinding me with the iPad camera’s flash.
“Goose isn’t dead!” I insisted, blinking rapidly. Was I speaking a different language? Was my voice pitched too high for small-town citizens to hear me?
“You backed over him with a moving van. ’Course he’s dead,” a bald guy in a golf shirt called.
A discontented rumble rolled through the restaurant. I was starting to feel dizzy. It might have been the hunger, but I had a feeling it was mostly the unanimous rejection of my newly adopted town and the fear that I’d made a huge mistake.
“I have it on good authority that she crushed him to death when she drove an eighteen-wheeler into the sign,” said a man with a decent amount of pizza cheese in his beard from a table across the room.
“I didn’t do any of that,” I insisted as Garland, the award-winning journalist, practically shoved his iPad camera lens up my nose. The flash went off several more times in rapid succession.
“Who uses a flash?” I demanded, covering my eyes.
“Ms. Hart is unavailable for comment,” Zoey said crisply.
“She’s standing right there,” Emilie shouted. “Least she can do is answer for her crimes.”
“Listen, lady, you’re gonna want to get out of my face,” Zoey warned.
“Can we get another order of breadsticks over here?” Wesley called.
“For Chrissake, everybody calm the hell down.” Cam pushed his way to our table, irritation written all over his gorgeous face. His brother followed and subtly stepped between Zoey and Emilie.
I looked up at Cam. “Help?” I pleaded.
On a growl, Cam turned his back on me and addressed the crowd, giving me an eye-level view of his very nice denim-clad ass. “The damn bird is fine, people.”
A woman in a beige romper and a slicked-back ponytail snorted. “That’s not what I heard. I heard her fancy helicopter rotors chopped poor old Goose to bits when she flew in from the city.”
“Yeah? And last week, when Loribelle was getting her septic system pumped, someone started a rumor that she was building an underground bunker,” Cam said.
“Just because that wasn’t true don’t mean this isn’t,” Pizza Beard said.
Cam took a breath. “Goose is fine. I saw it happen. He scared the hell out of these two, ate his fucking fish, then flew away.”
The permed justice warrior scoffed. “And we’re just supposed to believe you? I hereby call for an emergency town meeting Wednesday night to settle the matter.”
“I second,” her husband said quickly.
“Seriously, Emilie? You know it’s bingo night,” Cam said.
Cam’s brother rubbed a hand over his mouth but said nothing.
“Then I guess we’ll just have to reschedule it,” she said, nose in the air.
There was a general grumbling from the crowd. Who knew bingo was so popular?
“Don’t blame me,” Emilie insisted. “Blame the eagle-murdering interloper.”
