Chapter 36
I was nervous. Nervous about speaking at the hearing, of course.
But also nervous about seeing my BFF. Usually, I loved hanging out with Drew.
But lately, every time we crossed paths, my stomach seized up with dread that he might have seen or heard something about those three men on the boat that would send Xander swimming out of my life for good.
But today, when Drew came through the front door of the Sunny Side with Garth, he didn’t have any bad news. “Let’s get ready to rumble,” he called.
I relaxed—at least partially. There was still the hearing, after all.
“I’m already rumbling,” I said as Xander and I got up from our seats on the couch. “Or my stomach is, anyway.”
Garth gave me a sympathetic look. “Nerves?” he asked. When I nodded, he smiled in commiseration. “I hear you. I used to get terrible stage fright before presenting a case in court.”
“Did you ever try picturing the judge in their underwear?” Drew asked his husband.
“Do you really want to know the answer to that, babe?” Garth fired back.
Drew thought about that. “Never mind.”
Garth turned back to me. “Don’t worry, Hannah. You’ve got this,” he said. “And if you need any help, I’ll be right there as your second chair.”
“Second chair?” asked Xander.
“It’s legal lingo,” explained Garth. “In the courtroom, the lead attorney is called the first chair. And the assisting attorney is the second chair.”
“How many attorneys does it take to furnish a courtroom?” asked Xander with a grin at me.
“We can look it up later in my dad’s joke books,” I told him. “Come on,” I said to everyone. “We should go.” We four were riding to the hearing together, and Rita was giving the others a lift.
I gathered my notes and documents together while Xander grabbed his hat. At this point, hiding his hair underneath the gray knit cap had become so second-nature he didn’t even need a ponytail holder.
“Maureen,” I called upstairs to the housekeeper. “Xander and I are leaving. Thanks again for covering things here while we’re out.”
As we exited, my eyes lingered on that old photograph of my great-grandparents.
Maybe my ancestors were watching me, maybe they weren’t.
It no longer mattered. After spending all those hours unpacking the Sunny Side’s history, I finally felt free of my family baggage.
If I’d ever owed these progenitors a debt, in a few hours, it would be paid in full.
Then, for better or worse, my fate would be up to me.
* * *
It was a short drive over to the local Stockton University campus.
The public hearing was being held in one of the school’s large lecture halls rather than in the City Council chambers.
That told me they must have been expecting a big turnout.
The packed parking lot told me those expectations hadn’t been wrong.
I pulled my Kia into the first available space I spotted, and the four of us hustled into the Academic Center.
I double-checked the room number, but there was no need.
All we had to do was follow the crowd. The doors to the auditorium were propped open, and the animated chatter of dozens of different conversations was bouncing off the walls and spilling out into the hallway.
As people continued to flow past us, we paused at the entrance to take in the scene.
The place was already more than half full and rapidly approaching capacity. Looking around, I spied a lot of folks from the neighborhood I knew by name, even more I knew by sight. A few smiled and nodded, acknowledging us.
“Oh, there’s my dad,” said Drew, spotting the older, grayer version of himself. “Let me go say hi. I’ll be right back.”
As he walked off, I heard a familiar voice calling above the noise. “Yoo-hoo! Hannah!”
At the sound of my name, I turned to see Rita standing in a row down front, waving her arms at us like she was directing airport ground traffic. I waved back, and Xander, Garth, and I began to make our way toward her.
My friends had thrown their coats over four seats to save them, and it was not going over well with the two elaborately coiffed women eyeing the reserved spots from the aisle.
I picked up my pace and urged the others to do the same so we could claim our places before some kind of confrontation broke out.
“Excuse us,” I said to the women. Oh, they were not happy to see us arrive. But as the three of us stepped past them and shuffled down the row toward the coat-draped chairs, they relented and stomped off in search of other seats.
It was easy to know which coat was whose. We passed the peacoat back to Wills and the purple metallic puffer back to Paulette. Angie got the leopard fake-fur number. We left Miles’s Philadelphia Eagles jacket where it was to save the place for Drew.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” said Rita to me before I could get properly settled in the seat beside her. She looked past me and gestured with her head. “You need to get in line.”
I followed the direction of her gaze. People were starting to queue up behind the podium at the base of the stage, the line already stretching halfway up the middle aisle. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who had something to say about this new stadium.
Nodding, I returned to my feet.
“Leave your coat on the chair,” advised Angie, leaning forward to talk across Rita.
I handed my folder of notes and papers to Xander to hold while I shed my sweater coat and hung it over the back of my chair.
The council members, I saw, were beginning to make their entrance.
Checking the name signs, they found their places at the long table set up on the stage and sat. My anxiety flared again.
Just then, I felt a warm hand slip around my cold, clammy one and press it. Squeezing back, I peered down into Xander’s reassuring green eyes. “You can do this,” he said, though he didn’t need to. The way he was looking at me said enough.
So, while my friends echoed the sentiment and cheered me on, I took my documents back from Xander. And then, I took my place at the end of the queue.
* * *
As it turned out, the stadium wasn’t the only item on the agenda for today.
The more I listened to our City Council mumble and stumble their way through their old business, the more efficient our block association meetings seemed by comparison.
Part of me seriously wondered if our elected officials were trying to minimize the protests by putting most of the room to sleep.
Part of me thought they could really benefit from a big dose of sugar from Kneadful Things.
Finally, they wrapped up and moved on to the business we’d all come to discuss.
“First, we’ll hear the proposal for the new stadium,” said the City Council Leader into her mic.
She indicated a man in the front row who was already getting to his feet.
He sported a deep tan and an expensive suit that barely contained his pumped-up physique.
His hair was slicked into place, and a gold pinkie ring glinted on his little finger.
He was the slightly older, white-collar version of Joey D.
“Excuse me,” he said in a phony-friendly voice to the first person in line at the podium. It was Mr. Ricci, with Tiger tucked up under his arm.
“There’s no excuse for you and your stadium,” grumbled Mr. Ricci, stepping aside.
White-Collar Joey D took the podium. “TJ Anderson from GMK Partners, LLC,” he said, introducing himself. If nothing else, the guy knew his alphabet.
To begin, TJ launched into the proposal outlined in the letter. Predictably, he skimmed over the bit about displacing thousands of residents and businesses, forcing them to sell, and instead leaned into what a shiny new stadium could mean for the Shore.
Mostly, the audience listened quietly—if a little hostilely—and limited their comments to soft mutterings to the person sitting next to them. But when TJ started to extol all the economic benefits the project would bring to the town, people started to get their Jersey on.
“You’re trying to put me out of business,” shouted Gabriella, who owned the coffee shop at the other end of Atlantic Avenue. “How’s that a benefit?”
The auditorium filled with rumblings of support.
“You want to kick people like me out of our homes,” shouted an attendee in a leather jacket who wasn’t familiar to me. “If we don’t live here anymore, who’s left to benefit—other than you?”
The rumblings of support became cheers and applause.
Soon, others were on their feet, shouting similar sentiments. The City Council Leader had to bang her gavel repeatedly, demanding order, threatening to end the proceedings otherwise. On the upside, no one was in danger of falling asleep anymore.
Once the crowd calmed down, TJ continued.
He didn’t respond to any of the outbursts—or not directly, anyway.
But from where I stood behind him in line, it looked like he skipped over the next portion of his speech and jumped ahead to the end.
His conclusion that this stadium would be “good for everyone” fell more than a little flat, with some folks outright laughing at the absurdity of the statement.
“Thank you,” said TJ. And with a phony-friendly smile, he went back to his seat.
“Thank you, Mr. Anderson,” said the City Council Leader.
“We will now open the floor to hear from members of the community,” she continued.
“I’ll ask that you please keep your comments brief, as each speaker will be limited to five minutes.
” She nodded down the table at one of her colleagues on the council, who seemed to be the timekeeper.
“And remember, anyone who cannot conduct themselves with decorum will be immediately ejected.” I glanced over my shoulder at where she was looking, and—oh my—there was a small police presence at the back of the hall. I hadn’t noticed that before.
As Mr. Ricci stepped up to the podium, the atmosphere felt charged, prickling with electricity.