Page 17 of Sugar & Shadows

“You’re an animal doctor.” I glared at him and took a long pull from the bottle.

“Yeah, key word there being doctor,” he hissed. “And you’re an overgrown, cranky animal. Now sit your ass on that bench and eat the hotdog Josh brings you.”

Two hotdogs and a bottle of water later, some of my energy had returned. And, naturally, my constituents had again tracked me down.

“Thanks so much for helping with the plow issue last week,” Rob McNamara said. “It made a big difference.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” I said even as my mind reeled. Despite spending every waking minute fixing every problem this town comes up with, I’m still not enough.

“Don’t take this recall personally,” his wife Nancy, Maplewood’s resident dog groomer, said. “It’s just Bitsy on a power trip.”

“Of course.” My words were full of forced lightness. How could I not take it personally?

“If the recall goes through and we have to elect a new mayor, are we still going to have a spring zoning vote?” Curtis said.

My eye twitched. He’d always been an opportunist.

“I’ll personally make sure you do not get that variance,” Josh growled, chasing him away.

Logan put his arm around me. “You good?”

I nodded.

He jostled me around, making my head bobble. “You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?” I asked, my vision blurry.

“The smiling while dying inside thing.”

Josh nodded, his expression stoic, as always. “It’s very convincing.”

I didn’t bother responding. Just stared into the fire, trying to feel anything but numbness and obligation.

Kids ran around, laughing and screeching and playing. Clusters of people chatted and smiled. It made a lovely small-town scene. Yet all I could feel was the hurt. The loss of the festival, the recall, the loss of faith in me.

As I stared at the flames, every meeting, every late night, every last-minute grant application flashed through my mind. The hard decisions and the compromises. The opportunities I’d turned down. All for this town.

And now they wanted me gone.

Logan stood next to me, silent and supportive. From his lack of fidgeting, I guessed he didn’t have any animals on his person tonight. Not that I much cared.

“There she is.” After I’d spent a good twenty minutes dissociating, he nudged me.

Sure enough, Sabrina was on the other side of the firepit, talking to Ethan Calloway.

The ache and the numbness faded, and I was filled with white hot rage.

“I hate to say it,” Logan murmured, “but she’s gorgeous.”

I blinked, then blinked again, though I couldn’t look away from her. “What?”

He shrugged. “Just an objective observation. Beautiful, but evil. Like a Bond villain.”

I studied her. She hadn’t changed. She was still all sharp voice and sharper mind.

He grunted. “You didn’t notice.”

“No,” I lied.