“I can do whatever I want in this town.”
The video stopped.
I watched it again.
Then a third time.
I called Mom.
She answered on the fifth ring.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine.”
Silence.
I walked back into the briefing room, handed my notes to the officer beside me, and told him I had a family emergency.
Six hours later, I was driving toward the small North Carolina town where I’d grown up.
Mom was sitting at our kitchen table when I arrived. There was a bruise forming along her cheek and her left arm was tucked close to her body. Her glasses sat beside a coffee mug with one lens scratched.
I picked them up.
“Did Jason Parker do this?”
Mom stared at the table.
“I fell.”
“Mom.”
“Sarah, please.”
She finally looked at me.
“Don’t make this bigger.”
I sat across from her.
“Why?”
Her fingers tightened around the coffee mug.
“Because you don’t live here anymore.”
That answer bothered me more than a denial would have.
I asked what Jason wanted.
Mom didn’t answer at first. Then she opened the drawer beside the refrigerator and pulled out a folded envelope.
Inside was an offer from Parker Properties.
They wanted the diner.
More specifically, they wanted the diner and the three acres behind it.
The offer had expired two weeks earlier.
“How long has this been happening?”
Mom rubbed her shoulder.
“Robert started asking last fall.”
Robert Parker was Jason’s father. He had started with a small construction company and spent twenty years buying land around the county. By the time I left for the Army, his signs were everywhere.
“You said no?”
Mom gave me a tired look.
“Your father said no first.”
I looked down at the paper.
