Now You See Me by Kris Fletcher

good but human man into a candidate for sainthood, from what J.T. had seen.
    “I’m sure you told them all the important stuff, Harley, about what a great guy Glenn was. But with all due respect—”
    Harley snorted. Behind him, Lydia slapped her hand over her mouth as if to suppress a sudden urge to break into laughter.
    God, she was cute.
    “With all due respect, I think I knew a side of Glenn that you never saw. Did you guys ever hear about the time he almost poisoned the science teacher?”
    “No way!”
    That got them. All three kids inched closer. Even Lydia seemed surprised.
    All of a sudden, J.T. wished he’d spent more time with Glenn Brewster. Not just because he’d been a great guy, but so that J.T. could keep spinning stories to bring that soft glow to Lydia’s eyes.
    “Okay. This was way back. I was going into grade twelve, so your dad would have been heading into grade thirteen.”
    “Grade thirteen?” Ben gave him a dubious look.
    “Uh-huh. Back then, we could finish up after grade twelve, or stick around for an extra year. It was supposed to get us ready for university.” He winked at the kid. “’Course, I never got to do that year, but your dad did. Anyway, it was just before school started. Your dad was helping out down at the coffee shop and...”
    In the middle of the tale, J.T. realized that Harley had disappeared. By the end of the saga of Glenn’s adventures in trail riding, he noticed that Lydia had joined Tish on the grass, pulling the little one onto her lap and sharing in the laughter. She had a great laugh. It was full and throaty and brimming with life, and he’d lay money that she didn’t get to use it nearly as often as she should.
    He wished he could do something about that.
    Somewhere around the fourth account, right around the time he noticed that Sara was casting some mighty curious glances between him and her mom, he stumbled over an unexpected truth.
    “...so Glenn gave the guy the coffee, never even asked who he was even though this crowd had followed him in, and then—”
    And then, he got it. It was so clear that he wondered how the hell he’d missed it before.
    He didn’t realize he’d stopped talking until Ben scrunched up his nose and shoved his glasses higher up the bridge.
    “J.T.? Is something wrong?” Lydia’s laughter was gone. The frown lines between her eyebrows were back, and he gave himself a mental kick.
    “Sorry.” He pulled himself together. “I, uh, just remembered something. Anyway, the guy went to pay and he pulled out his credit card and then...”
    Lydia didn’t care about the location of her business. Well, maybe she did—she wasn’t dumb, she knew what a prize spot she had—but that wasn’t it. She wanted the building itself. Lydia Brewster wanted to hold on to the building because her husband used to work there and she was trying to keep it for her kids. Just like she wanted stories that would make him seem real. She wanted to make sure her kids—Glenn’s kids—would have every chance to know the person he had been. Not just from pictures and memories, but by walking the floors he’d walked and doing the things he’d done.
    At that moment he vowed that he would do whatever it took to make sure Lydia got to keep her building. After what she and her kids had gone through, they deserved that much. After all, a hero should be remembered. Not sainted, not idolized, but remembered.
    Even if that hero had been part of the group that had almost destroyed the town twenty-five years ago.

CHAPTER FIVE
    A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER , Lyddie stood dumbfounded in front of the bank manager’s desk and tried to make sense of what he was telling her.
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    Ted McFarlane—sometimes known irreverently as the First Man, in reference to him being married to Mayor Jillian—shifted in his chair. It was obvious that he didn’t like being the bearer of bad news.
    Tough.
    “Lyddie, if it were up to me I’d approve the loan.