The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (carter reed TXT) 📗

"He forwarded a job he thought I might want to explore."

I waited for her to elaborate but she didn't. "Do you?"

"I'm not sure. It's interesting but it's different." I motioned for her to continue. "He knows some people who put together an organization that identifies regions with the highest levels of voter suppression and engages in extensive community activism to move the needle. What's fascinating to me is they've taken a fully non-partisan approach—or, as nonpartisan as possible, considering the intentions behind suppression efforts—and they've found some positive results." She lifted a shoulder. "Preston said they want to double the number of regions in which they work this year and he thought it might be a good fit for me."

"Am I right to think this sounds very different from your last gig?"

"Yeah, for sure. Completely different. The goal of this organization is increasing access for all voters. They don't take a stand on candidates or issues aside from those specifically tied to voter suppression." She tucked a wisp of hair over her ear. "I mean, it sounds great but, if I went that direction, it would be an enormous change."

"Would that be so bad?"

"I don't know what it would be other than a massive shift from working on a senator's Capitol staff to being fully removed from the Beltway. That could be nice, considering D.C. is not real life and has no connection to the needs and priorities of real people."

She was a bit breathless as she spoke, as if she couldn't get the words out quickly enough. There was a lilt to her voice, the same one I'd heard when she talked about toast and her problems with the local highway system. "You sound excited."

"I might be? Maybe? I'm not sure."

"You're allowed to be excited," I said.

"I'm aware of that, Linden."

I had to smile at the snap in her tone. God, I loved it when she was brutal. "You can see yourself doing this."

"Again, maybe. It could be good or it could be the most boring, dead-end thing in the world. All I know for sure is it won't lead to me being anyone's chief of staff and I probably won't work on another major campaign if I wander down the nonpartisan rabbit hole but—" she held up her hands—"I'm not headed in that direction anymore, am I? It's been two months. There have been other scandals. My hot-mic moment isn't a relevant news story anymore. I'm not getting any calls because no one wants to call me."

"You've gotten plenty of calls. You've rejected them all."

"Yeah but that was different," she replied. "It was media and political privateering."

"You're allowed to be excited," I repeated. "And you don't have to view this as a last resort."

"That remains to be seen." She glanced up the street. "What's the deal with this town and Halloween? There was the Spooky Stroll at the elementary school last weekend and the jack-o'-lantern gallery in the town center, plus the two thousand pumpkins or so on the lawn outside the town hall. And all of that is on top of the actual event. That's a lot, right?"

Okay. Moving right along and away from Jasper and her next steps.

"Even though Salem gets all the attention, this whole region is witchy and haunted as hell. Gotta lean into it."

"Fair enough."

After a family dressed as the feelings from Inside Out headed back up the street, Jasper turned to me with a strange smile. "I bet you and your siblings had some precious group costumes when you were kids."

"My mother always tried to make that happen but there was only one time when we were old enough to know what was going on and still allowed it." I took a sip from my bottle. I didn't care much for Kahlua or vodka but tradition was tradition, and I honored that shit. "For reasons I still don't understand, she made vegetable costumes for us. Magnolia was a green cabbage, Ash was a beet, and I was a purple onion."

"Bless her earthy-crunchy heart," Jasper said, laughing. "That is just preciously bizarre."

"What about you? Any wild costumes?"

The brightness in her smile dimmed by a million watts and she turned her gaze to the street. "There's only one Halloween I remember as a kid. It was when we were living in Japan."

"You…lived in Japan."

"I was born there." She didn't look at me as she said this. "My father was stationed at Misawa and we lived there, on Honshu, until I was five. He was in the Air Force." She twisted the cap on her bottle—open, closed, open, closed. "Halloween in Japan isn't anything like it is here. Or it wasn't when I was there thirty years ago. The base still had some fun with it though and we did a family costume that everyone loved. I've tried to remember what it was but I keep coming up empty. I just know it was great and that was a good year for us."

Several things were true at once. Jasper had never spoken at any length about her family before. She sounded deeply sad, almost mournful. And the finality in her voice made it clear that this one happy Halloween was an endpoint of sorts.

I didn't know what to say. Part of me wished a horde of kids would come bombing down the street and break this melancholy with their shrieks and excitement. The other part of me knew Jasper had shared a lot of personal things with me over the last two months but not a word on her family which meant this was a fine opportunity for me to listen if she wanted to share.

"That's one of the only times I remember being with him," she continued. "That Halloween on base."

I reached over, took her gloved hand in mine.

"We moved to Louisiana after he was discharged, and then to his family's land in Georgia. They'd been selling off pieces of the old plantation for decades but there was still enough for us