Chapter 7: The Pleasant Man

On Saturday morning Gerard Todhunter was sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table when I came downstairs.

He had let himself in through the back door, he told me.

He had not wanted to frighten a grieving woman with a doorbell.

He had also brought a box of pastries and arranged them on Gran's good plate.

"The chicory is dreadful," he said, pouring me a cup from her pot.

"Your grandmother made it that way on purpose. It kept visitors short."

"You aren't a visitor," I said.

"You're a trespasser with a bakery box."

He laughed, genuinely, and that was the worst part.

He was easy to like.

He asked after my father's health before the end.

He remembered the name of the bus company where my father had worked.

He admired the crack in the ceiling plaster.

"Ms. Haskell, I'll be direct," he said.

"Corvane would like to buy this house."

"It isn't for sale."

"Four hundred thousand dollars."

I put down the cup.

"The house is worth two-eighty on a good day," I said.

"I know. I'd like to be generous. Four hundred, cash, a fifty-thousand-dollar relocation bonus, and a position in our legal department."

"A paralegal job."

"A very good one."

"With the company that fired me yesterday."

"With a company that had nothing to do with that." His smile didn't move.

"You'd be our liaison to the neighborhood. Imagine the good you could do."

"You'd turn me into the person who tells my neighbors to leave."

"I'd turn you into a woman with a pension," Todhunter said gently.

"Think of your grandmother. She'd want you safe."

I heard the stair creak.

I did not turn around.

Gran taught me never to look away from a man who is selling something.

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