Maggie picked Harry for the very same reason she picked a career in public service: She wanted stability, but she also wanted power. When Harry laid into William all those years ago, her classmates were absolutely stunned that he took on a Dutton, but for her, the recipient of his fury was completely irrelevant. What impressed her was the crisp savageness of his response and the clear statement that it made: No one, not even the Dutton heir himself, could talk to him like that and expect to have a working jaw left to tell the tale.

That someone so plain and predictable, so completely unnoticeable, could upend the power dynamics of her high school in an instant was a revelation for Maggie. Everything shifted in her mind that day. The natural order was a facade. Trajectories could be altered. If something was set in stone, you could simply smash the stone to pieces the way Harry smashed the bones of William’s face. Up until that moment, she had spent her life dutifully cleaning with water; now she understood you could clean just as well with fire. 

Her parents, like most parents, hoped she would marry someone just like William Wedderburn Dutton, V⏤direct heir and grandson of an accomplished and respected man⏤but she wanted to align herself with true power, the hungry kind, not false pride and brutish bravado. The other girls may have wanted the unkind “Prince” of West Vernal, but she wanted the boy in the thrift store jacket.

Now, after almost fifteen years of marriage, and nearly just as many as city manager, she knew that only her attention to detail could pull them through this. If there was an elegant way out of this ugly situation, it would only be found through careful management of small details. Harry could bulldoze the blackened remains of the three burned houses, but only she could find something that no one else could find. She knew to look where no one else was looking. That was how she found Harry, and that was how she intended to find the 10th coin. 

Maggie finished her work for the day, and walked across town to the West Vernal Grange, home of the West Vernal archives. Somewhere in those rooms were the records of the West Vernal Observer, the newspaper owned and run, generations ago, by Serena Wilcox Dutton, beloved wife of old Wedderburn, and local storyteller.

Copyright 2023 Kesel Wilson (entirely, 100% human-created)

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