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Something deep in my gut felt hollow at the sight.
I pulled up a chair anyway and leaned my back against it.
“We need to talk about living quarters at the back of the office,” I said to the three of them, even though Diana and Matilda were the only ones that really had any input. “City zoning says that I can’t put living quarters and business quarters in the same building. Since it’s zoned for business…”
“Oh, I had that problem when we started building my office,” Dutch said. “They couldn’t build living quarters in there because it was my business. Or so the city said. Pretty much, I have this lounge area in the back with a bed and a bathroom and a shower. But it’s not really a ‘living quarters’ because it doesn’t have a closet.”
“That was what I was going to suggest,” I said, nodding in understanding. “To be qualified as a ‘bedroom’ it has to have a closet. If we skip the closet, and put shelves along one wall, then we can skip the whole ‘it’s a bedroom’ thing with the city.”
“That’s dumb,” Matilda muttered almost under her breath. “Why would it matter?”
“It matters because of money. They can tax you differently if it’s zoned as a business rather than residential, and vice versa,” I explained. “If we don’t want to do mounted shelves, we can put an alcove in there that you could put a rolling shelf in or something. Whatever you think you can manage on your own, since legally I’m not allowed to do it.”
“Dumb,” Matilda muttered again.
“I say go with the shelves on my side,” Diana explained. “I don’t ever plan on staying there for any length of time anyway. So I won’t really need storage.”
Matilda didn’t say the same.
Not that I expected her to.
But still.
I wanted her to talk. To have some input into this conversation.
Yet, she’d only said under ten words, and wouldn’t make eye contact.
“I can also have Ellen meet you on Monday to…”
“No!” she blurted. “I’d rather just talk to you now.”
My brow rose.
Maybe Dutch was right.
Maybe Ellen really was a problem.
I’d asked her, but she said what needed to be said, and made her shitty words seem nice.
I’d noticed that a few times when she’d been talking with clients.
Just then, a cell phone pealing rang in between songs, making multiple people look over at our table.
It was Matilda who sighed and looked at her watch, her face all but falling with what she read there.
“Who’s that?” Diana asked inquisitively.
Thankfully, asking what I wanted to know myself.
“My stepbrother,” she muttered darkly. “The semi-nice one at least.”
The way her voice seemed to sound so hesitant as she spoke about her family spoke volumes.
I had that same hesitancy when I thought about my sister and brother-in-law.
The only good thing that came out of their relationship—and them themselves—was Conrad, my nephew.
How two horrible people could produce such a sweet soul was beyond me.
“I gotta take this, he never calls,” she murmured as she hopped down from the chair.
She was so short, the bar-height table came up to midchest as she walked around it. She had to squeeze by Dutch and then me to get out, and I had to resist the urge to catch her hand and pull her to me.
What the hell was it about her that set my soul on fire?
She walked outside, and I found a reason to need to be out there, too.
“Gotta go grab my wallet,” I lied to the two ladies.
Then I, too, was out the door.
When I got out there, I made a show of walking to my bike and looking through my saddlebags, when in reality, I was listening hard to pinpoint where Matilda was since she hadn’t been right outside the door when I’d exited.
I finally found the sound of her voice, and turned to get a better look.
She was standing beside a tree right outside the bar, in the shadows.
And she was listening silently as she was all but being yelled at.
“Listen, Alan. I don’t have the money that you say that I took,” she finally answered. “I haven’t had any money in my account for months. She’s been taking it out every single month, like clockwork, the moment it hits my account.”
She paused as there was more yelling.
“No, I don’t think I have any in there right now. I looked last night,” she grumbled. “I haven’t been able to even pay my rent on time because I have nothing in there. So get off me.”
There was a longer pause and more yelling.
“Fine. If there’s some in there, take it. Take it all for all I care. Just know that I have no clue how it got there, since I haven’t signed on in a few hours to look. Just know that it was probably your mother,” she grumbled.
