That was the best realistic outcome. The worst realistic outcome sat several seats away. Grant Holloway was forty-five and dressed for a rural auction the way wealthy men dress when they want to appear relaxed without losing the advantages of tailoring. Fitted brown sport coat.
Expensive jeans. Boots that had seen more leather conditioner than mud. He ran Holloway Development, a regional company that bought old downtown parcels, assembled them into larger projects, and sold the result as revitalization. Sometimes the revitalization was good.
Sometimes it looked suspiciously like tearing down everything with memory and replacing it with black metal signs and $8 coffee. Grant wanted the Prairie Star building because he already owned the empty pharmacy next door and held an option on the old hardware store at the corner. With all three properties, he could create a mixed-use block: retail downstairs, loft apartments above, parking behind. He had shown Walter renderings once.
They were attractive in the way computer drawings are attractive when they do not include the people displaced by them. Grant offered Walter $68,000 privately before the auction. It was enough to clear much of the debt but not enough to leave Walter comfortable. Walter refused because Ruth’s sign still hung over the door and because he was not yet ready to reduce her life to square footage.
Now, with the bank deadline passed, Grant had come to buy the same building cheaper in public. Walter understood the logic. He even respected parts of it. Grant was not a villain twirling a mustache.
He employed local contractors, paid taxes, and had restored two truly ugly buildings downtown. But Grant looked at Prairie Star and saw frontage, foundation, and parking access. Walter looked at it and saw Ruth kneeling to pin a hem for a nervous bride, teaching Maya to press seams flat, handing quilts to military families who sometimes cried before they made it out the door. Maya looked at Grant and saw an enemy anyway.
“Stop staring,” Walter whispered. “I’m not staring.” “You are measuring whether you could trip him without getting caught.” Maya’s mouth twitched.
“I haven’t decided.” Walter almost smiled. The auction moved through household items first. Old display cabinets.