The DNA Matched My Cousin, Not Me, So They Kept Me Anyway novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: Eleven Percent
Conor's POV
The notice was taped to the diner's front door at eye level, under a streetlight, so nobody could say they hadn't seen it.
I read it twice with my glasses on.
HARROWGATE REALTY HOLDINGS. NOTICE TO QUIT. THIRTY DAYS. The ground-floor premises and the upper rooms.
Rhea read it once, standing beside me with her coat open and her arms crossed over her navy dress.
She said, "It's the building, then. Not me."
"It's both," I said.
Her boss stood in the doorway in a bathrobe with a spatula in her hand, because that was the nearest weapon she had.
"Thirty years I've paid that rent," she said. "On time."
"I know."
"I'm going to cook something and then I'm going to hit someone."
I told her to cook.
I drove Rhea home from the curb, which was twelve feet, and then I sat in the truck until her light went on upstairs.
It was one in the morning when I let myself into my father's house on Asylum Avenue.
He had moved his bed into the study in October, when the pneumonia got bad.
The oxygen machine hummed under the portrait of my mother.
He was awake.
He was always awake when I came in late.
"You were at the Harrowgates'," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Did Garner say anything to you?" he asked.
"He said it was a shock for the family."
"He says that about snow."
I sat down in the leather chair that had been mine since I was twelve and took off my glasses.
"Dad. I'm going to say something and you're going to hate it."
"I rarely hate what you say," he said. "It's the thing I like best about you."
"I think Garner is trying to put the girl out of the family. Rhea. And I think he's using Harrowgate Realty to do it. And I think I should be on her side."
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