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“You’re out of your fucking mind. You’ll be killed in your sleep. People will stick horse heads in your bed.”
“Adjustment is part of the process.”
“I’m not talking about adjustment. I’m talking about death threats. I’m talking about all the people who live in these houses you think you’re going to knock down. Where do they fit in this scheme of yours?”
“They don’t.”
“So, what, you just erase them?”
“They erase themselves. I already own a lot more of the property than you might think. Most of these people you’re talking about—they’ve already sold to me, or they
will in a few years, when they’re ready to move into some assisted living place near their grandkids. The older they get, the more they need money. I have money. I give it to them, they move away. It’s simple.”
“Is that what happened with my grandma? You made her an offer she couldn’t refuse?”
He covered the roof of his house with Splenda packets. “She asked me not to talk to you about it. It was a condition of the sale.”
“You’re lying. She wouldn’t do that.”
“She did.”
Ashley reached across the table and knocked over his creamer house.
Roman gathered up the tubs and avoided her gaze. She was angry, and that was his fault.
But it wasn’t you who made the condition. It was Susan.
Same difference. Roman had been in league with Ashley’s grandmother, and he’d known that after Susan died there would be human costs to reckon with. It was part of the price he’d agreed to pay for Sunnyvale.
He didn’t know why Susan had wanted Ashley left out of it. He hadn’t cared.
He refused to care.
He considered the building materials before him. If he worked the jams and jellies into the plan, he could get more ambitious. He made the footers bigger.
“The last wave always stands in the way of progress,” he said calmly. “It’s natural for you to feel like the culture and character of Little Torch Key is being erased. But you’re wrong. I’m incorporating its culture and character into the new place. It will be the Little Torch you love, only better.”
“You don’t know anything about what I love.”
“Don’t I?”
“You want to turn Little Torch into some kind of fake, tacky Disney World paradise for the rich, and you think you can do it by evicting all the people who live there now, or turning them into servants. But nobody will want to stay at a place like that. Nobody will come back year after year and recommend it to their friends. It’s going to be pretty but forgettable. Heartless. Like you.”
“People do seem to enjoy Disney World.”
“You don’t know anything about what people enjoy. You’re barely even human.”
“Forgive me if I don’t agree that heart and soul are what tourism is all about.”
“I won’t forgive you for any of this.”
He checked her face. She wouldn’t.
He built another layer of jam walls and said, “It’s good, then, that I don’t need your forgiveness.”
She crossed her arms and looked out the window at the rain. Roman layered the available creamers, constructed a roof, and folded his hands on the table.
She knocked it down.
