At least Louis was going to be reasonable. “Rene is under a lot of pressure, and given what I found out at the office, it’s worse than what we thought.”

“What happened? Did you talk to Jane?” Louis moved to Cricket’s side.

As much as anyone could talk to Jane. The young woman had been emotional to say the least. “I don’t know,” Sylvie said. “She cried a lot. I ended up finding Gabriel Layton. He told me that there was a bunch of drama with his sister bringing Roberta into town.”

“She refuses to fly.” Cricket dabbed at her eyes. “Says if the good Lord wanted her to fly, he would have given her wings. So she only travels by car. And she won’t drive herself. I feel for whoever had to go and get that mean old woman.”

It had been Ashley, and she’d been sitting in her brother’s office crying when Sylvie had sought out Gabriel. The tears had quickly turned to anger as she’d told Sylvie every awful thing that had gone down during the six-and-a-half-hour drive from Houston. When she’d stormed out, Gabriel had apologized and helped her track down Jane Calhoun, who had also cried.

Gabriel had stayed with Sylvie, making sure she understood what was going on. It had been Gabriel who’d let her know Rene hadn’t taken any clear actions to fire Louis. He’d been utterly shocked by the idea.

“Jane said Charles had definitely been there this afternoon. He checked in with security shortly after lunch and left after twenty minutes. I’m fairly certain the only person he talked to was Rene. According to Jane, Charles walked out looking happy with himself, and that was almost the same time she got the call from the clinic. If I’d been a couple of minutes earlier, the receptionist at the clinic wouldn’t have made that call.”

“I didn’t even think about the fact that they had Rene as my emergency contact.” Cricket’s fingers crumpled the tissue in her hand. “I hate being treated like a child.”

“Rene didn’t mean what he said,” Sylvie replied. She had to smooth things over or they would be right back to yelling at each other. It was obvious this tension had been building for a long time, but she had to get them all through the board vote or their lives would look very different on the other side.