Same playbook. Create a noise. Let it sit. Watch the problem remove itself. I'm not going to remove myself, Ray said.
I know that. Dot said. But he doesn't know that yet. He thinks two choices. Leave.
Engage in a way he can use against you. There's a third choice, Ry said. Yes. Dot said. There is.
Come to the diner this evening. 7:00. After closing, he went at 7:00 that evening. Dots was closed to the public. Chairs up on tables, low lightss in the back.
There were six people there. Do Ray, a man named Hector Webb, who was 67 and had run the town pharmacy for 30 years. Quiet man, substantial. He had the stillness of someone who had made a decision and arrived at peace with it. A woman named Fay Drummond, 58, retired school teacher who had lived in Greystone Falls since birth and knew it better than the road map that existed of it.
A man named Calvin Puit, no relation to the previous garage owner, who was 62, a carpenter with the kind of hands that made Ry feel a kinship, hands that showed their history, and Coach Burch, who had arrived 5 minutes early and was drinking decaf and had a folder on the table in front of her. Ry sat, looked at the people around him. He thought, "How long has each of these people been waiting? How many separate years of patients are represented at this table? " Dot said, "I ask people I trust, people who have specific reasons. " She looked at Rey. I didn't ask anyone who didn't already have their own accounting with Boh Harrove.
We should say that plainly, Fay Drummond said. She had the manner of a teacher, direct organized. We all have separate grievances. We're not a mob. We're people who have documented things and not had occasion to act on them.
Mr. Callaway, she looked at Rey. You're not the reason we're here. You're the timing. Ry looked at her.
Meaning meaning Harrove has made a mistake with you. She said he's used his playbook publicly quickly without confirming what you actually have on him. That's defensive. He's scared and scared men make mistakes. Gerald used to say that.
Dot said quietly. Fe nodded. Gerald was right about most things. They talked for 2 hours. Methodical, no dramatics.
The kind of conversation that working people in their 50s and 60s have efficient, grounded, aware of what was realistic and what wasn't. Hector Webb had records of county pharmacy licensing decisions that had been made inconsistently in ways that always seemed to benefit chains over independents, particularly when those independents had publicly opposed Hard Gro's positions. FA Drummond had 30 years of schoolboard meeting minutes she'd kept personally. Documenting budget decisions that didn't match public records. Calvin Puit had lost a county construction contract in 2020 under circumstances he'd had an attorney look at.