My Ex and My Best Friend Planned My Reunion Roast. The Town Chat Roasted Them Instead. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Admin Rights

At her grandmother's cabin, the chat's admin shows up with a casserole and Britta learns the rules; the one man she can't read is on the dock.

Gram's cabin sits at the end of Pine Point Road, and the bars on your phone live at the mailbox.

I found that out by driving past it, watching my signal drop to nothing, and then watching the chat go with it.

At the mailbox the lines were stacked up.

【Pete: Pool update. Eleven to one she makes it to dessert. The cart kid has the receipts.】

【Helen: I don't think it's nice to bet on a grieving woman.】

【Pete: Helen, you put five dollars on "she cries at the slideshow."】

【Helen: That's a prediction, Pete, not a bet.】

By the time I rolled down the gravel to the cabin door, they had thinned to one line, and then to none.

The lake lay flat and gray behind the trees.

The cabin smelled like cedar and cold coffee, and Gram's reading glasses were still on the kitchen windowsill.

I stood in the doorway for a minute and let it hurt.

Then I got a trash bag out of the car, because cleaning is what I do when it hurts.

I had filled two bags when a truck came crunching down the gravel.

It was a white pickup with a bumper sticker that said I BRAKE FOR CASSEROLES.

Dolly Wiegand climbed out with a foil-covered dish held in both hands and a fanny pack bouncing on her hip.

She was sixty-nine, and she had been my grandmother's bridge partner for forty years.

"Hotdish," she said, and shoved it at me. "Tuna. Don't make that face, it has potato chips on top."

"Hi, Dolly."

"Don't hi me. You've been in town since four, and I had to hear it from the Pig."

She put a hand on my cheek, hard.

"You look like your Gram when she lost at cards."

"That's about right."

"Good. Angry is healthy." She marched into the kitchen and started opening cupboards. "Where does she keep the big spoon?"

But I had been holding it in for three hours.

And she was the one person in Tern Lake who had never called me brave.

"Dolly," I said. "Do you moderate the Locals chat?"

"Since 2014. Why? Did somebody say something about you? Because I can ban them. I banned a man for a month over a zucchini."

"Somebody said something about me, yes."

"Who?"

I took a deep breath and told her all of it.

I told her about the floating lines and the committee thread and the tiny trophy bus.

Dolly held the big spoon like a gavel and did not blink.

"That sounds like a stroke," she said finally.

"It might be."

"Strokes don't come with a run of show."

"Dolly, I know the full schedule. Eight o'clock slideshow. Eight twenty, the tiny bus."

"The bus." She looked pained. "Shayla ordered a bus?"

"It's a trophy."

"I know it's a trophy. Don't explain it to me. I am just upset about the bus."

I pulled out my phone.

The signal bar in the corner of the screen had one tiny line on it.

"Give me ten minutes with the mailbox," I said. "I'll prove it."

We walked down the drive together, Dolly with her purse on her arm.

At the mailbox my phone found its bars, and the chat came pouring back in so fast it nearly knocked me over.

I stood there and read it out loud.

"Pete says the pool is at eleven to one. Helen thinks it's rude to bet. Somebody called LakeLou just posted a picture of a pie."

Dolly's eyebrows went up.

"Pete runs the bait shop. LakeLou is Lou from the post office. The pie is real, she baked it at five."

"Now watch."

I waited.

Dolly dug into her purse, found her phone, held it six inches from her face, and typed with one finger for a long, long minute.

Then I watched it appear in the air above her head.

【DollyTheMod: oops that was supposed to be a private message to my granddaughter. the cat is not sick he is just fat】

【Sue: *This was not a private message, Dolly. It went to 4,100 people.】

【Pete: Who said the cat was sick?】

I didn't say a word.

I looked at her until she looked at me.

"The cat is not sick," I said. "He's just fat."

Dolly lowered the phone.

"Well," she said, in a small voice. "I've moderated stranger."

"Do you believe me?"

"I believe the cat." She put the phone away.

"You've got your Gram's stare, too. Okay. What do you need from the admin?"

I laughed so hard I had to hold on to the mailbox.

That's when I saw the gray pickup parked across the road, with its engine running.

A man stood next to it with his back to me, one hand on the fence post, looking at the lake.

Not one comment floated over his head.

"Who's that?" I said.

"Oh, honey." Dolly's voice dropped. "That's Emmett Dettmer. The Dettmers' oldest."

I looked at her.

"Dettmer," I said.

"Brock's brother. He's been gone ten years. Came home Monday because of his father's hip."

The man turned around.

He was tall, with a black cap pulled low and a scar like spilled wax down his left forearm.

He walked over and held out a ring of keys.

"Your grandmother's pontoon," he said. "It's in slip twelve at our marina. She paid through winter."

His voice was low and unhurried.

"Thanks," I said, and took them. "That was kind."

"The dock out back is rotten past the third post," he said. "Don't walk it in the dark."

"Okay."

That was all.

He nodded to Dolly, got back in his truck, and drove off without looking in the mirror.

The chat woke up the second his taillights disappeared.

【Don't trust a Dettmer.】

【Pete: Emmett broke his dad's nose in 2016. Ask anyone.】

【Helen: Blood is blood. He'll back his brother.】

【Sue: Nobody has actually seen him in ten years. This is all rumor, people. I am marking this as rumor.】

Dolly's phone buzzed.

She read it, and the color went out of her face.

"What?" I said.

She turned the screen around.

It was Brock's mother, posting a flyer in the Locals chat, with four hundred likes.

WELCOME HOME FISH FRY, FRIDAY, LEGION HALL. COME HEAR BRITTA SORENSEN SAY A FEW WORDS OF APOLOGY!

"Of apology," Dolly said, "is underlined."

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