Chapter 11: Monday Soup

Elias found me on the ninth floor an hour later, sitting on the made bed with my shoes still on.

He stood in the doorway with two paper cups and did not come in.

"You don't have to tell me," he said.

"Yes, I do."

I took the cup from him.

"My father ran Farrington's, forty seats in Ravenswood, for twenty-two years. He made the soup himself every Monday."

"I've heard of it."

"Nobody's heard of it. That's the point."

I turned the cup in my hands.

"The building belonged to a Lowell holding company. Every five years he signed a new lease."

"And the last time?"

"They doubled the rent and said he could take it or leave it."

"He took it."

"He sold his truck. He took a second mortgage. He worked sixteen hours a day, and eight months later they refused the renewal."

Elias stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

"He died of a stroke three weeks after the sign came down," I said. "He was fifty-seven."

"I'm sorry."

"I wanted to know why."

I looked at the window, where the river had gone black.

"So I got a job at the Lowell Grand, in the events office."

"And?"

"I spent a year learning where they kept the old property files."

I drank some of the coffee.

"In a basement box marked Ravenswood, I found a letter on Lowell stationery, in Helen's handwriting."

"What did it say?"

"It told the landlord's manager not to renew. It said to raise the rent until my father went away on his own."

"That's the letter."

"It's the only page that says she did it on purpose. Everything else could be called a bad year."

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