“You can’t stop progress, you know,” he said.
“Not everyone considers development and progress synonyms.”
“You can’t stop development, either.”
“Maybe not, but you can damn well try,” I said. “You can fight it with everything you’ve got.”
“You can try.”
“I will.”
To the casual onlooker, perhaps it looked as if we were having a friendly conversation. We were both smiling, or at least baring our teeth at each other. Mother, whose antennae were more finely tuned to social nuances than most humans, suddenly appeared at my side.
“Meg, dear,” she said. “Are you making Mr. Briggs feel at home?”
“I hope not,” I said. “By the way,” I added, turning back to him. “I don’t suppose you’d be nice enough to tell me who else is against this horrible outlet-mall plan?”
He pursed his lips and glared at me.
“Oh, well,” I said. “I can find out anyway. I mean, I’m sure Mrs. Pruitt is gearing up to fight you, and I could always join forces with her if I had to. I was just hoping for an alternative. She’s not exactly my favorite person in the world, but under the circumstances—”
“Now, Meg,” Mother said in her most soothing tones. “I’m sure Mr. Briggs isn’t up to anything terrible. If you just sit down and talk about things, I’m sure you can reach some mutually satisfactory agreement.”
Briggs startled us both by uttering several words Mother usually pretended not to know.
“I beg your—” Mother began, drawing herself up.
“I don’t know what you people think you’re trying to do,” he snapped. “You’re not going to get away with it. I don’t care what you think you know or who you show it to. Just leave me alone.”
He stomped away.
“What an utter barbarian,” Mother said in her iciest tone. If we were living in the kingdom of Etiquette, where Mother had the power of high and low justice, Evan Briggs would just have forfeited his head. He and the sheep.
“A barbarian, definitely,” I said. “Can you see him as a murderer?”
“Easily,” Mother said. “He chews with his mouth open. Do you think he is?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure out, dear.” She patted my shoulder encouragingly before returning to the lawn—presumably so she could cast withering glances at Mr. Briggs from closer range and with a larger audience. And hover near Dad.
“That was dramatic,” Michael said. I started slightly. I hadn’t realized he’d followed me and heard part of our conversation with Briggs.
“He’s defensive about something.”
“No kidding,” he said. We both stood gazing, not at the landscape, but at Mr. Evan Briggs.
“Something Mother said set him off,” I said. But why? To me, she sounded like the soul of reason and conciliation. Which ticked me off, but only because she was being reasonable and conciliatory to the man who wanted to turn our rural retreat into a concrete jungle. Why would Briggs react so savagely?
“Maybe it was an accident,” Michael said. “Some phrase that hit him wrong.”
“‘I’m sure you can reach some mutually satisfactory agreement,’” I repeated. “That’s what she said.”
“Why would that annoy anyone?”
“Well, it annoys me because I know she means ‘Stop being rude to your guests or you’ll be sorry later,’” I said. “I have no idea why it would annoy Briggs.”
“‘I don’t care what you think you know or who you show it to,’” Michael said, echoing Briggs’s words. “What does that sound like to you?”
“Like someone telling a would-be blackmailer to publish or be damned. Can you imagine Lindsay blackmailing someone?”
The fact that he thought about it for ten or fifteen seconds before speaking almost answered the question for him.
“Not for money,” he said finally. “But to accomplish something she felt she had to accomplish …”
His voice trailed off and he shrugged.
“To save her job, for example,” I said.
“Yes, if she wasn’t blackmailing Wentworth, she was certainly planning to.”
“How did she feel about development?”
“Anti,” he said. “Which was pretty ironic for someone who considered a town without a major mall beyond the pale of civilization, but we all have our inconsistencies. So yeah, if she were still in town, she’d oppose it. But I can’t imagine she would have cared that much after she left. And what could she possibly have had on Briggs?”