Page 219 of Just One More Thing

She bends and kisses Willard on the cheek. “Thank you. For everything.”

Willard pats her hand. “You two did the hard part. I just sat here.”

Then he tips his hat and goes back to watching the town.

Miss Hattie opens The Salty Dog cart.

The chalkboard reads:

SPECIAL MENU

THE JAKE WIENER

THE MO-AN-SLAW DOG

THE HAPPY ENDING

(sausage wrapped in a glazed doughnut twist)

I stare at it.

Mo stares at it.

Then I order The Happy Ending.

“The namecamequickly,” Miss Hattie says, trying her best not to laugh and failing miserably.

“I bet it did,” Mo mumbles.

Miss Hattie taps the bell and hands it over.

I take a bite, and it’s incredible. The sweet glaze against the sausage shouldn’t work, but it does. I point at the thing in my hand. “Okay,” I say with my mouth full. “That’s really good.”

“Of course it is,” Miss Hattie says. “I know wieners.”

A little later I’m sitting with Ryan, Wayne, and Bethany while Mo and Maddy sit along the fountain edge.

I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I see Mo’s face change. Surprise first. Then her hand goes to her mouth. She wraps Maddy in a hug and holds on. They sway side to side and stay like that for a while.

When Mo starts walking back, Maddy calls after her and says something that makes Mo stop, her eyebrows going halfway up her forehead.

She turns back to Maddy.

Then she comes over and drops into my lap. “Everything okay?”

She steals a sip of my drink and nods, looking a little stunned.“Granny’s running for mayor.”

“Mayor,” I repeat.

“Marybeth is stepping down after—“ She pauses. “The Fornication Fountain incident.”

“The what?” Wayne says, sitting forward with the focus of a man who just found his activation word.

“You don’t want to know,” she says.

“The hell I don’t. You can’t drop a statement like that without details.”

“Wayne.”