Town Square, The by Ava Miles

never went by Evangelina,” she said after taking another delicate sip of water. “Harriet is what everyone calls me. Except for my father.”
    Lowering his arms from the booth, no longer feeling casual, he leaned forward. “Will you tell me about him? What you remember? Was he a good father?”
    She crossed her hands prayer–like, but her posture was brittle. “He was a very driven man, known for his excellence in science. He expected the same of me and Maybelline. When he was home, which was rare, he would always ask us about what we’d learned in school or what we thought about this or that current event. I remember when he first asked me what I thought about the war in Korea. I was in high school. I didn’t have an answer prepared, and told him so. I could see he was disappointed. After that I read what I could. The next time he asked me, I had an answer.”
    The dissimilarity of their childhoods couldn’t be starker. He’d been raised by simple ranching people, who loved the land and knew more about the animals they tended than current events. Growing up, he’d wanted to talk with them about what he was reading in the national newspapers he’d begged the library to purchase. The news might have been old by the time it reached him, but it made him feel connected to something bigger than Dare Valley, which he loved, but knew was only one small dot on a rather big map.
    Then he met Emmits Merriam while doing some manual labor at his summer house, and his life changed forever.
    He’d asked Emmits what he thought about establishing oil production in Iran, which Exxon (was it “Exxon” or “Esso”?) and British Petroleum were discussing with the Shah. Emmits had stopped what he was doing, stroked his chin—a stalling tactic Arthur had picked up from him—and then asked how old he was.
    When he responded, “sixteen,” Emmits laughed and told him to come inside. He’d brought him into his study, a room filled with photos of him with famous presidents like FDR and Truman. Ivory tusks hung on the wall, a relic from a safari in Africa. And leather–bound, gold–embossed books were everywhere. Arthur had decided then and there he was going to have a study like that some day.
    They’d talked for two hours about the future of oil exploration in the Gulf. And from that day onward, Emmits would invite Arthur in for another discussion after he finished his chores. It had been heaven on earth to him.
    “Emmits and I used to discuss current events when I was in high school,” he simply responded.
    “He was your mentor, wasn’t he?”
    “Yes,” he said, still feeling that sense of luck and destiny or whatever the poets called it. “I did chores at his summer house up here, and one day we got to discussing current events. From then on, Emmits saw something in me. ‘Potential,’ he called it. He suggested I apply to Columbia University and take classes in everything to see what I wanted to do. He was on the board and supported the school, so that helped my application. Dare’s education system is…well.”
    Something Emmits had a mind to improve, he thought, but didn’t say.
    She nodded, her soft gaze on his face.
    “When I attended my first journalism class,” he continued, “within minutes, I knew I had found my calling.” It was as if he had been given the key to an unknown cipher about himself. The feeling was exhilarating, but it had made him worry for the man who’d been raised in the simple town of Dare Valley.
    “And Emmits opened doors for you,” she added.
    His mouth quirked up. “So I’m not the only one who knows how to investigate.”
    That bold green–eyed stare again. “I had to know as much as I could about you.”
    He’d leave what she thought she knew for another time. “Yes, Emmits got me the job at The New York Times and opened doors for me when it came to interviews. But he knew I would do a da—darn good job at it. It wasn’t charity.”
    They had been very clear about