LITMIR.BIZ

      Tuesday morning, Emily remembered her pledge to have a second cup of coffee, ensuring she was wide awake before she began her morning tradition of praying over her to-do list. She and God walked through her schedule and her task list, and she asked for help with the challenges of the day. It was an especially nice day for January, clear and crisp with invigorating morning sunshine. Emily opened up a bar of Edmundson’s Joy Soap for her own personal use. It had a pleasant, lemony scent cut with verbena and another floral essence she couldn’t identify. True to its name, it was a happy soap. A high-quality soap, too. The Edmundsons had achieved a lush, silky soap at a price that suited her shop and her clientele.

      “With more sales like that I can save enough to take out an ad next month,” she told Othello as she scratched him behind the ears at breakfast. “I bet I can even draw up an annual marketing plan. Love soaps for Valentine’s Day. Faithfulness for anniversaries. Kindness soap as a thank you gift. Peace for Christmas. I could put a card in the gift wrap with the verse from Galatians.” Othello blinked. “Then, if it works out, I could give a special price for the eight-bar set—it’d make a great confirmation or baptism gift, wouldn’t it?” The possibilities spread themselves out before her.

      Othello wound his way around her legs and stared up at her with his round yellow eyes. Sounds brilliant to me, he seemed to say.

      “I’ll let you know how my plan works out at dinner, Othello. Maybe we’ll have to celebrate a successful day.”

      This plan really seems brilliant, she thought as she walked to work, enjoying the beautiful day.

      And then she turned the corner onto Ballad Road and saw the line. A dozen or so men stood waiting outside West of Paris. Emily’s beady-eyed top customer defending his spot at the very front of the bunch.

      The Homestretch Farm workers: her newest, unlikeliest patrons. Those young men looked every bit the hard cases she’d heard they were. Some people said every one of them had had a criminal record before his sixteenth birthday. Every spring when the new hands came onto the farm, the town quietly held its breath because they looked like such a crop of miscreants. They seemed to look tougher and meaner every year. Emily was afraid of half of them, quite honestly, even though she felt bad for feeling that way.

      She’d been against the farm when it had first opened three years ago. It seemed like far too big a risk for so small a town. However, Sorrent’s farm hadn’t given Middleburg much trouble. He’d kept it under tight control and even joined the town council. There had been very few complaints.

      But that was before this morning. Emily wasn’t sure she was ready to get so friendly with Homestretch’s questionable residents. Still, she told herself as she walked up the street to her shop, they look no meaner than a banker would look foreclosing on your loan. Smile, and remember how long it’s been since you made a dozen sales before eleven.

      She clutched the plan in her basket of work papers and reminded herself she’d come up with a brilliant solution. If she could just stick to it and hold her ground with these men, her problem would be solved before noon and the whole absurd episode of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap would be over by day’s end with nothing but clean men to show for it.

      “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as the bodies split into a human hedge leading up to her door.

      The Latin-looking one—the one with the silky voice who had winked at her the other day—winked again. “Morning, Miss Montague,” he said.

      “No work today?” She turned the key in the lock and heard their feet behind her. She wanted to ask, “Does Mr. Sorrent know you’re here?” but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Of course Sorrent knew they were here. He knew where they were every second of every day.

      “We got to be back in half an hour,” one of them said. “So we gotta work fast.”

      “I want two bars!” a lanky boy who barely looked old enough to drive said from the back of the throng.

      “Me, too!” cried another. “I’ll pay ten a piece.”

      “Fifteen!” came another shout.

      Emily stilled the key and turned to face the crowd. She was glad to count only ten faces—that made things easier. The plan. Work the plan.

      “Let me make one thing perfectly clear: you’ll pay the regular price of four dollars, and I’ll sell each of you one bar of soap—no more.” A chorus of moans rose up from the band of soap-seekers. “And I want you to understand clearly, in no uncertain terms, that these soaps will do nothing but get you clean. They’re soap, and nothing else, and I’ll have a bone to pick with any of you that claims otherwise.”

      There was a moment of thoughtful silence, and Emily heaved a sigh of relief as she opened up the shop and let them inside. Was it possible that she’d gotten through to them?

      “Sure, Ms. Montague,” said the oldest of them, “whatever you say.”

      He must have thought he’d been hiding the smirk on his face, but it became instantly obvious to Emily that they hadn’t absorbed a word. They’d still have plunked down twice as much with glee. Well, that couldn’t be her problem. She’d come up with her best possible solution—whether those men learned from it was going to have to be Gil’s—or God’s—problem.