Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best fantasy books to read TXT) 📕

papers and said that more than fifty people—fifty? Really?—had signed a petition to rescind the farm’s permission to keep farm animals within the Magnolia Bay city limits.

“For those of you who don’t know our procedure,” President Tammy said, “the petitioners have gathered more than the required minimum number of names to bring this matter before the city council for consideration. We won’t make a decision today. We will set that for next month’s meeting, or possibly the month after that, depending on how long it takes each of the concerned parties to present their case. In the interim, the notes from today’s meeting will be published online at MagnoliaBayCityCouncil.com, as well as in the Magnolia Bay news flyer that y’all all get. I would urge anyone who has an interest in this matter to spread the word and to gather any information you’d like the council to consider at the next meeting before we make our decision.”

Tammy handed the petition to the secretary and asked him to enter it into the meeting notes. Then, she asked whether anyone present here this afternoon wanted to comment on the subject.

Quinn grabbed Abby’s hand and squeezed, but before she could stand, Miami Vice Ken hopped up again and hogged the podium. When he said that that the presence of farm animals, with their offensive smells and sounds and potential health hazards, might keep investors from recognizing the lucrative potential of the adjacent waterfront property, she gasped. Maybe she’d been stupid, or just plain too riddled with anxiety to be listening effectively, but she’d only just now figured out that the land the guy was talking about was behind Bayside Barn.

He went on to say that he had heard from a reliable authority that the waterfront acreage would soon be up for sale. She felt Quinn stiffen beside her. Maybe he had just figured it out, too.

But the guy had to be crazy. Abby didn’t imagine that soggy wasteland would be a viable place to build anything. Still, Miami Vice Ken continued to expound on the financial merits of a potential bayside development and urged the city council to get behind the idea with their existing capital and fund-raising capabilities. Finally, after not just one but two turns at the podium, the guy wound down and went back to his seat.

Abby started inching out of the pew to make her statement, but someone brushed past her from behind and gently pushed her back down with a hand on her shoulder. Abby recognized the tightly curled gray hair and rotund build of her favorite Bayside Barn volunteer. Edna!

Edna, the retired schoolteacher who volunteered at the farm, got behind the podium. She set a bright-orange clipboard on the podium and set a battered shoebox on top of it. Wearing a conservative blue jacket over a plain white blouse and a sensible, trim-fitting skirt, she unleashed her schoolteacher voice and her schoolteacher stare and her schoolteacher pointer finger.

She aimed her stare and her finger at the Miami Vice guy, shooting darts of angry energy that made him shrink back into his seat in the front row. “You must not be aware, sir, that Bayside Barn has nurtured and educated schoolchildren on the importance of animals and our relationships with them for the past twenty years!”

She shuffled through the shoebox and took out a stack of photographs. Walking up to the jury box, she gave Tammy a photo. “Here’s a picture of you, Tammy, in the eighth grade, hugging a goat.” She marched up to each of the city council members and handed out photographs, one by one, to the individuals in the photos. She had at least one photo for each person sitting in the padded chairs. “You’re too old to have visited the barn on a school field trip,” she said to one of the ladies. Abby winced at Edna’s blunt statement, but the lady didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her wrinkled old face softened when Edna added, “But this is a photo of your grandchild, isn’t it?”

The woman nodded. “Can I get a copy of this?”

“You keep it. In fact, all of y’all can keep any pictures of yourselves or someone you love. And when you look at them later, I hope you’ll remember how much these animals mean to the community.” After Edna had given a photo to each of the city council members, she turned to the crowd and handed out dozens more of kids interacting with the animals at the barn. “Look at this one.” She waved a yellowed Polaroid at a guy on the front row, and he took it from her.

“Look at that kid’s face,” Edna said, her voice loud and passionate. “Look at the joy in that smile.” The man passed the picture on while Edna kept talking. “You think with his torn shirt and dirty overalls he had everything he needed in life?”

“I knew this kid,” someone said.

“I can tell you that I knew that child, too, because I taught him. And I can tell you that he did not have what he needed. His daddy beat him, and his mama stayed drunk most of the time. He spent his school years in and out of foster care. When he lived with his parents, he came to school dirty and hungry every single day, and the other kids teased him about it.”

Tammy wiped a manicured fingertip under her eyes, and she wasn’t the only one affected by Edna’s speech. Plenty of people in the crowd were either sniffing back tears or smiling with reminiscence.

“To those animals at Bayside Barn, that poor, unloved kid was just as good as every other kid in his class. All he had to do to get love and acceptance in that place was to hang on to a pony’s neck and absorb the loving energy it had to give. And that little bit of love meant a whole lot to a kid who had nothing.”

She gave another photo to the guy on