This time her face opens into its widest smile as she listens.
“Good question. The person who gives the go-ahead for repairs to a dam is the person who owns the dam.”
Pause.
“Also a good question. The person who owns the dam is you. Us. Bourne.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, he’s at our front door.
He is wearing a tuxedo jacket and shirt and bow tie over jeans and sneakers.
He is holding flowers.
And a tiny velvet box. A ring box.
We are sitting around the kitchen table when he knocks, and she is laughing before she’s even got the door open.
“Omar Radison. Why on earth do you own half a tuxedo?”
“Work-study job at college. Catering and Events.”
“I’m impressed it still fits.”
“Nothing ever changes around here”—he pats his belly—“except my waistline, of course. The pants went long ago.”
She laughs, touches the top of her own pants absently. “And where’d you get these?” She takes the flowers—yellow mums in a pot—with reverence. They are blooming things, after all.
“Donna Anvers grew these herself. A good sign, no?”
“The best.” Her other hand cups her flushed cheek like he’s told her they’ve struck oil underneath the Do Not Shop.
“And you were right, Nora.”
“About what?”
“Everything, probably. You’ve always been right. I’ve known it … Honestly, I guess I’ve known it all along.”
A pause then as she looks at him and he looks at her and neither looks away.
He clears his throat. “But among other things, you were right about the dam. The dam belongs to Bourne. The decision as to what to do with it is ours. If it’s leaking, if Belsum needs it repaired to get up and running, we’ve got the chance to answer a question I only ever got one shot at answering. And that time I chose wrong.”
“What question?” Nora’s trembling.
He gets down on one knee, holds the tiny box up to her. “Say no.”
She’s half-laughing, half-crying again. “Omar Radison, you’ve made me the happiest woman in the world.”
“Open the box,” he says.
She does. Inside is a piece of paper, origamied to fit. She unfolds and unfolds and unfolds until it lies flat. The deed to the dam. Witnessed by Hickory Grove. Built perhaps at his behest. But inarguably, unambiguously, notarized right there in black and white as belonging in its entirety to Bourne Town Council and Municipality.
“You mashed it all up!” Monday shrieks.
“It’s a copy.” Omar’s eyes do not leave my mother’s. “This one’s only for dramatic effect.”
She hugs it to her chest. “And sentimental value.”
“Sentiment is for the past.” He says it very softly because by now he is standing quite near her.
“This is from the past,” she points out.
“No”—his eyes are shining—“this is for our future.”
Her eyes are shining too, and when I search them I see that she can’t quite believe it, this promise of a future. But I see that she can’t quite not believe it anymore either, that her permanently reined-in expectations are slipping their leads, taking first tentative steps, then running wild.
One
The plan is simple. All we have to do is wait, which should be easy since we’ve been waiting all our lives, but you’d think I would have learned by now: nothing is easy.
It would be nice to march over to the library and wave the deed to the dam in Nathan Templeton’s face, and he would know we knew and had him beat. Now that we know permission is ours to withhold, we’ll never let him repair the dam. Maybe it’ll leak, then crumble, and Bourne will flood and drown, but at least then we’ll be cleansed and reborn and returned to our rightful state via the removal of the barrier that started it all. Realizing that’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make, a sacrifice Belsum has forced us to make, a sacrifice Belsum has made less of a sacrifice—there is not much Bourne left to save—Nathan Templeton will give up in defeat and slink off in shame, never to darken our doors again.
We can’t do that, though. Because he can’t know we know.
The reality is disappointingly less dramatic. First, we have to wait ten days. Then, on the twenty-second, when they try to start repairs, Russell will file the injunction to make them stop working on Bourne infrastructure without Bourne approval. Then we’ll wait some more while Belsum scrambles to do whatever they’re going to. Maybe a judge will finally be persuaded they’re evil when we show how they were trying to keep our own dam a secret. Maybe a judge will finally be persuaded by the proof we have at last that the effluent was not an accident but something Belsum knew and took measures to hide going in. Or maybe March will prove too long a delay, and fighting our injunction will prove too tiresome, and Belsum Chemical will decide Bourne is more trouble than we’re cheap and move on.