Page 68 of Happy Harbor
Josie thought for a moment. “Yes. I will make a choice every day, just like you do. I will choose to trust you until you give me a reason not to.”
Diane wanted to hug her, but she knew that was going too far, too fast. For now, she was happy sitting on that park bench with her daughter’s hand in hers. She couldn’t let her down. She had to save the restaurant and, in the process, save her relationship with her daughter. It was her last chance.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
After a long meeting with Joe Strand, Josie and Diane were frustrated. Josie had hoped that they could sue Dan for some kind of elder abuse or even extortion, but Joe said there were problems with doing that. First, nobody knew where he was. Finding him could take a long time—certainly more than two weeks.
Second, the only proof they had was Ethel’s word. No text messages, no paper trail. It would be an uphill battle no matter what.
“Well, that was a big fat fail,” Josie said as they walked out of Joe’s office. “What are we going to do?”
“We just have to think. How can we raise money quickly?”
“I guess I could take out a mortgage on the house.”
“You can’t do that. It’s your security.”
“I have to do something.”
“Isn’t the historical society tour starting soon?”
“In two days,” Josie said, rolling her eyes.
“Why don’t we piggyback off that and put some donation containers around the house?”
“We can do that, but I don’t think it’ll be nearly enough.”
They continued walking down the sidewalk toward the restaurant. The lunch rush would start soon, and it would be all hands on deck.
“Maybe we can have some kind of event,” Diane suggested.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’m just running through ideas here.”
Josie chuckled. “Remember when I had to sell cookies door-to-door that time?”
“You mean the one year you were a Girl Scout?”
“Yeah. I really wasn’t cut out for making friends with other girls. They annoyed me, and those outfits? Yuck. Anyway, you were sober for a few weeks when I was selling cookies, and we went door-to-door together. Do you remember that?”
Diane smiled. “I do. It’s one of my fondest memories.”
“We sold a lot of cookies.”
“I guess we made a good team.”
“Of course, you relapsed before we could finish our selling spree, and I found you in your car eating the boxes we had presold. Nana had to apologize to those people and offer to bake them cakes if they didn’t ask for their money back.”
Diane sighed. “I’m sorry, Josie.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I still won the grand prize of an insulated mug with a teddy bear on it.”
“Wow, big prize,” Diane said, laughing.
“Our troop leader was a witch.”
“Good morning, ladies,” Walker said, meeting them at the corner of the building.
