"Are you trying to drive Sid to his death?"
"Exactly! Burning down his restaurant is the same as cutting off every road he's got left."
Ella wanted to say more, but a wave of nausea cut her off.
And I fled, disgraced, out the door. I got outside and my manager's call came through.
"Boss, the restaurant's burned down. What are we supposed to do now?"
"A few of the staff want their wages so they can go..."
Whatever came next was probably too cruel, so he stopped there, sparing my feelings.
Something hollow spread through my chest, and even my voice came out rough.
"You—you tell them."
I fought to hold down the sob, refusing to let myself cry out loud.
"I'll get every last dollar of their wages into their hands soon. Tell them not to worry."
"All right. And don't dwell on it too much."
"Try to see past it. You've got a long road ahead. You just start over, that's all."
I hung up and walked to the burned-out restaurant.
A tear slipped from my eye and struck the cold floor.
For that runaway success of a place, I'd gone countless sleepless nights reworking the design, studying the menu, refining the service.
Because I wasn't a rich man. That one shop was all I had to build myself up with.
I never imagined my own mother's fire would burn away every last hope I had.
And it was right then that a call came in.
"Sid, I heard you opened a seafood restaurant. Is that true?"
"Then next time I'm in town, I'll come try it..."
Hearing Pamela Winfield's voice, I couldn't hold the sob back.
"Sid, what's wrong? Is someone giving you trouble?"
Pamela was instantly on edge.
"My restaurant. It's gone."
"There was a fire last night. Burned the whole thing to nothing."
That calm, sharp-minded woman fell apart in a second and cried right along with me.
And that was when my mother came over. The moment I saw her, my heart went cold.
I slowly hung up, then fixed her with an icy stare.
Guilt must have been eating at her, because she couldn't meet my eyes. She just spoke in that concerned tone.
"Oh, well. The restaurant's gone now, so try to let it go."
"Listen to your mother. Don't open another restaurant. Just go find a regular job."
I looked coldly at that kind, gentle face of hers. The words sounded like concern, but they were really for Elmer's sake.
She was afraid that if I opened another restaurant, it would stir Elmer's jealousy, so she wanted me stuck working some job.
Did she not know how hard it is for a man without a college degree to find work?
I'd eaten so much hardship, worked myself half to death to save that money, taken on the risk of a loan to open that restaurant.
I never thought she'd go so far, for Elmer, as to set fire to her own son's restaurant.
Leaving me with nowhere to turn, and no way even to call the police.
I wanted so badly to ask her to my face why she'd done that to me. Then I remembered what Ella had said in the private room, and it stopped being a mystery.
So it turned out Elmer was the son of her first love, and she loved the man so much that it stretched to his boy, enough to throw away her own son's future.
No wonder she'd treated the two of us so differently since we were little, no wonder she'd frozen my father out with the same cold cruelty.
My father died carrying that regret with him, because she never came to see him one last time. She went to bring Elmer home instead.
I should have hated her back then.
"Why can't you look at me?"
Now that I knew what she really was, I had no patience left to spare her.
Faced with my sudden coldness, my mother lost her composure at once.
Her eyes darting away, hiding. That was the panic she always fell into.
"Son, why would you ask me that? It wasn't—it wasn't me who set fire to your restaurant."
