His announcement got the attention of everyone at the table.
“Two months, anyway. Durin’ that time, I plan to keep the cantina closed while we get it ready for a grand reopenin’. And after that, I’ll decide how to proceed.”
He looked down at Lily, and she saw the question in his eyes. Did she want to tell them her news, too? She bit her lip, cleared her throat. “Ethan’s hired me to help him get the place ready and manage the grand reopening.”
“What about your day-job, Sis?” Harrison asked.
“It’s…it’s been…I’ve recently decided it’s just not what I’m meant to do.” She couldn’t look at her brother when she said it. “And the time I was happiest with my work was when I was helping Dad at the diner.”
“So this is…” Harrison looked from her to Ethan and back, over and over. “It’s a long-term arrangement?”
“It’s a two-month arrangement,” Lily said, before Ethan could try to answer. “After that, we’ll recalculate.”
“But Lil, where’s the job security in that? You need to think about your future, and?—”
Maria interrupted with, “Because there’s fixin’ to be a shortage of nursin’ jobs in the next quarter?” She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “An RN can always find work, hon. She’s okay.”
Harrison shifted his gaze to Ethan’s, and Lily saw how unhappy her brother was about all this. Didn’t he realize that if she could’ve forced herself to keep working as a nurse, she would have? She’d have spent the rest of her life tied up in knots at work, terrified of making a mistake that would kill someone, just to make her dad and brother happy. Just to make them miss Mom a little less.
She’d been trying for a year to do just that. But it was no good. She couldn’t force it, and it would be wrong to try. Wrong for the patients, and wrong for her.
Ethan cleared his throat and pulled everyone’s attention back to him. “My manager says I have to make a video.” He said it loudly enough for most of the table to hear. “You know, to address that article. What it said, what the truth is and like that. I was supposed to have done it two days ago, but…” He ended with a palms-up gesture.
Baxter looked around the crowded place, and said, “Why don’t you do it right here?”
“Right here,” Ethan repeated, as if trying to interpret the words.
“Yeah, go on up front and talk to the locals. Tell ‘em your side of it.”
“Baxter’s right,” Willow said. “That would stop the gossip in its tracks. Just be the guy they know.”
Maria was nodding. “We could livestream it,” she said. “We can, right, Orrin?”
Orrin nodded. “Already gettin’ out my phone.”
For some reason, Ethan looked at Lily, as if wanting her opinion more than anyone else’s.
She said, “It would shift the focus from the dark stuff about your parentage to the brighter news about converting the cantina into a honky-tonk. If it works, mission accomplished.”
He looked around the packed cantina. Even as he did, Manny was climbing up onto an overturned whiskey crate in the front of the room. He had a microphone and held up his other hand for quiet.
The mariachis stopped playing and the diners stopped chattering.
“Too late,” Ethan said. “Manny’s already underway, I can’t?—”
“He’ll call you up there in a minute,” Lily said.
“Why would he do that?” Ethan asked.
“Cause you’re the new owner.”
His eyes widened at her.
“Well, it seems obvious that’s what he’s about to tell them, doesn’t it?”
Chapter Seven
Manny started talking, and Orrin aimed his phone to record. Lily turned in her chair to pay attention. She thought Manny looked ten years older since his heart attack. There was a lot more white in his hair, and his face seemed thin and tired. But he was smiling, thanking the communities of Mad Bull’s Bend, nearby Quinn, and all Quinn County for their years of friendship and fun in his molasses-thick Texas drawl.
