It was a good fucking question, a question I didn't have an answer for. "I have no clue."
He stole a fry from my plate. "Maybe she's really a secret agent or something. Or in witness protection and you're totally getting her in trouble."
I'd told him the bare bones of how we'd met at the masked ball, obviously excluding anything that happened upstairs, and I was now regretting letting him know even that tiny bit.
"She's a pop star in disguise," he went on. "Or a princess from another country. Or a crime boss. A time traveler from the future. A vampire. Oh, I know. She's your mom."
I groaned at how disgusting that thought actually was. "She's most definitely not my mom."
He laughed loudly, drawing the attention of the people behind us. Great. Hopefully, they hadn't heard anything too terrible regarding our conversation.
Fucking teenagers.
The food was brought over, giving me blessed silence as Archie got to work eating. He really did order nearly everything on the menu.
"Don't worry," he said around a mouthful of chicken. "I'm saving room for dessert."
"Oh, good. I was really worried there for a second."
While I ignored the sounds of chewing coming from my left, I stared out the window at the closed factory door, wondering what was going on inside. Maybe I'd been distracted for a split second and missed her. For all I knew, the woman was at the event, only feet away from me.
God, I wanted to just run over there, bust the door down, and search through every person, every room, until I found her. But something held me back. Restraint. Logic. The fear of being arrested.
"I know. It's so damn sad."
Voices from the table behind us snagged my awareness.
"He's lived in that house for over seventy years," a man said. "And she moved in when they got married, fifty years ago."
A woman murmured her sympathy about whatever was happening.
"Yeah, and they've turned down ridiculous amounts of money to move out."
My ears perked up at this statement, and I slyly tried to angle my head in order to hear better.
"So now they're getting legal notices from the damn lawyers, threatening to have them evicted if they don't sell," the man continued. "And they can't afford to get their own lawyers to fight back, especially not with the cancer diagnosis and all the healthcare costs."
Jesus. Were they talking about what I thought they were talking about?
"And they're not the only ones. The whole neighborhood, all this history, being destroyed in order for flashy condos to go up."
His disgust was made clear in every word, and I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
"Maybe everyone should band together," the woman spoke up again. "Lawyers are expensive, but if everyone gave what they could, maybe it'd be somewhat affordable."
"Damn, Marie, that's not a bad idea."
I wanted to turn around and tell them that was an awful idea, to just let it all go in the name of progress, but I knew they wouldn't see it that way.
"We need to act now. Actually yesterday. Lenny's barbershop is already gone, and I hear the old bookstore is next. It's crazy. I used to go there every day after school and Miss Margie would let me read as long as I wanted. She can't sell. That place is an institution."
A twinge of something landed in my chest. What the fuck was that?
Archie caught my eye, and I wondered what he was thinking. If there was one thing my dad and his ex did right, it was getting Archie to love books. He was way into graphic novels, which, on second thought, probably had nothing to do with his parenting and everything to do with pure accident.
Did Archie know what these people were talking about? That his dad and brother's company was actually responsible for the so-called flashy condos that would soon go up here?
Nah, he couldn't know that. He didn't really pay attention to what Hawthorne Properties was doing, right? I didn't talk about work much with him, and I was pretty certain my dad didn't either.
