Chapter 7: Off My Property

She didn't come to the deck.

She waited at the bottom of the stairs, by the surveyor's wheel, and let the deck come to her.

Wells went down first.

I went down after him with a dish towel still over my shoulder.

My mother looked at Wells, not at me.

"You said you'd have a signature by now," she said.

"I said I'd have a conversation. I had one."

"And?"

"And the answer is no." He nodded at the sign. "It's lit all night."

Her eyes moved to me at last.

They went over my cutoffs, my Lantern shirt, the towel, my bare feet in the gravel.

Nothing in her face changed.

"Is this the manager?" she asked him.

Behind me, I heard the deck go quiet.

Forty people with paper plates had stopped eating.

"I'm sorry," my mother said to me pleasantly. "I didn't catch your name."

"You picked it," I said. "Twenty-five years ago."

She tilted her head.

"Mr. Fordyce has been generous," she said. "I'm more generous. Three million dollars."

Wells turned his head and looked at her.

It was clearly the first time he'd heard that number.

"That's nine hundred thousand dollars more than this land is worth," my mother said. "It's more than anyone has ever paid for you, dear. Take it."

Dale came down the stairs behind me, still holding the fryer basket.

My mother finally noticed him.

"Mr. Bledsoe." Her voice went soft. "Still frying. I'd have thought the bank would have the place by now."

"Bank's paid off, ma'am," Dale said. "No thanks to you."

"I'm sure your daughter will be glad to hear you're managing." She smiled at him. "Without her."

Dale's face closed.

That was the one I couldn't let her have.

"Get off my property," I said.

My mother laughed lightly.

"Your property is a motel with a hole in the sign."

"There's no hole in the sign. You haven't been here in eight years. You just remember it the way you left it."

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