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He has no clue it’s happening, but he will.
“Maybe you don’t, but you’ll give me one anyway if you want to walk away from this encounter without a mouth full of blood and broken teeth.”
He laughs sharply, never taking his eyes from me. “Listen to you. Since when did you threaten like that? You’re shaking, Ansell. Don’t tell me you’re feeling something.”
I clench my jaw shut. He’s right, I’m out of control. Too many emotions are swirling and I don’t know how to shut them down. I never had to do this before, but now suddenly I’m feeling everything so intensely, and I’m not sure if I can make it stop long enough to survive beating my best friend into an ugly, bloody pulp. My nerves are raw and my skin feels like it’s flayed open.
“Tell me why.” I whisper the words. I don’t trust my voice not to break.
He takes a deep breath and releases it. Uncertainty appears in his eyes and he relaxes his posture slightly as he turns toward the street. “It was never about Marie.”
“Who was it about?”
“William. His father. The whole fucking Crawford family.” Baptist takes a deep breath. His hands curl into fists and relax, over and over, like a flower searching for the sun. “You know how I feel about them.”
“I do. You despise those bastards. I always assumed you had a reason, but we don’t ask. That’s part of our deal, right?”
“Right.” He nods once. “The emails weren’t meant to hurt Marie, only to show her the truth about her fiancé. I wanted her to break things off with William, not torch him in public, although I’ll admit I enjoyed Baby’s article. I hate William and I despise his father, and I want that family to suffer more than I’ve ever wanted anything before in my life.”
“Why?” I ask it again with force. I’m so beyond myself now that I can’t help it.
Baptist doesn’t glance over. He keeps staring into the street. “When I was first born, my father bought the Belwick on the cheap back when Glenside hadn’t been developed much. It was this old vaudeville theater and was basically not much more than a stage, some lighting, and a bunch of crumbling and moldy seats. He renovated it with his own bare hands, he brought in the acts, he made that place shine. Before him, it was nothing, but afterward the entire structure had life again. Those were really happy days and it’s hard to understand just how much they mean to me now, growing up in that place. I’d stand backstage and watch the different acts night after night with him, and we’d go to that bar afterward together and he’d introduce me to the singers and the musicians and the comedians. I loved that place so much and it was my father’s entire world. The stage, the seats, the crowd, it was all home to me, and Magnus Crawford ripped it away.”
I let that sink in. I knew his father owned the Belwick for many years and sold it to the Crawfords, but I didn’t know it’d created such an intense hatred. I was never given any details of the deal and assumed it was mutually beneficial. Usually in those circumstances, attendance is declining, revenues are falling, and the owner decides to sell rather than trying to turn things around.
“Your father must’ve had his reasons for selling.”
“He felt trapped. The Crawfords were moving into the area and buying up every local stage they could get their hands on. They were even buying movie theaters in some places and renovating and modernizing them. They were slowly siphoning business away from my father and year after year, more and more acts began to skip my father’s theater entirely. At this point, the Belwick wasn’t what it was during my childhood, and my father was getting older, and the Crawfords came to him with their money and their promises, and they suckered him into signing. They stole his business then bought the dregs, just like they did to a dozen other regional theater owners all over the country. Worse than that, they made a bunch of promises they didn’t put down in writing. They told him they wouldn’t change anything about the facade. They promised they wouldn’t remove the original details and they wouldn’t change the name. They made a thousand little assurances, and my father believed them.
“He got paid and my parents retired on that money, but everything the Crawfords swore they’d never do, they immediately turned around and did without a second thought. They ripped out original details from the vaudeville days, raised ticket prices, pushed out local vendors, demanded better acts. It revitalized the Belwick, but now that place is like every other generic theater in the country, profitable but soulless, and my father was never the same afterwards. I hate the Crawfords for making him feel like he had to sell and for taking away the only thing he ever cared about, the only thing that really made him feel worth a damn. He watched his theater change, and I think it broke something inside of him. He hasn’t been the same since.”
