Fifty-Six Days

JULIAN

The first number in Nora Flynn's notebook is fifty-six.

She has written it in blue marker at the top of a page taped to the library meeting-room door. Beneath it, in smaller handwriting, she's written ORIGINAL DAYS UNTIL COUNCIL VOTE. Then someone—Tess, judging by the neat letters—has added TODAY: FORTY-SEVEN.

It is Saturday, June twentieth, and I have come to the library to look at historical site plans. I haven't come to attend Nora's meeting.

At least, that is what I tell myself when I stop in front of the open door.

Inside, six folding tables form a rectangle. There are cardboard cups of coffee, two boxes of pastries, a stack of blank survey sheets and a handwritten sign reading ALL OPINIONS WELCOME. A woman I recognize from the town session is looking at a seating chart with the intense suspicion people usually reserve for jury summons.

Nora stands at the far end of the room. Her braid is coming loose and she has a red pen tucked behind her ear. She's trying to get a projector to display something other than the Windows login screen.

“Press the source button twice,” I say from the doorway.

She turns. “Are you following me?”

“Not efficiently. I was looking for the historic drawings.”

“Then you took a wrong turn.”

“Your projector seems to have, too.”

Tess, kneeling beside a cardboard box of extension cords, looks up. “Please help us before I throw this thing into the harbor.”

I step inside, check the connection, change the display setting and hand the remote back. Nora's laptop appears on the screen beneath a document titled NORTH WALK: QUESTIONS BEFORE ANSWERS.

“Thank you,” Tess says.

“Please don't make a speech about how generous he is,” Nora tells her. “He pushed two buttons.”

“Three,” I say. “One of them was very difficult.”

Nora points toward the pastries. “Your reward is a stale croissant.”

I should leave. There are a dozen reasons to leave. My mother has warned me about confusing my internship with a place in the town's advocacy effort, and the folded sheets on the tables clearly have advocacy written all over them.

Instead I ask, “Is this open to the public?”

Mrs. Pike appears behind me with a ring of keys. “The room is reserved for a community discussion. Visitors may attend unless the organizers have a capacity concern. They should sign in so we know who was here.”

“I'm a Mercer,” I say.

“I'm aware. Your name is on the information-session packet.”

I sign the sheet, writing Mercer Vale—summer visualization intern beside my name because anything less would look like concealment.

Nora watches. “You didn't have to stay.”

“I can leave if my being here changes what people say.”

She glances around the table. “I'll ask them.”

It's both the most reasonable and the most inconvenient thing she could have said.

By ten, there are seventeen people in the room. Mrs. Alvarez sits beside the arcade operator, Mr. Bell, who keeps polishing his glasses as if the answer might be hiding on the lenses. Diane Flynn has brought a tray of sliced peaches but looks prepared to discuss insurance rather than hospitality. A delivery driver who uses the north ramp, a hotel employee, two year-round residents and several concession holders take places around the tables.

Nora stands by the screen and grips her red pen.

“Before we start,” she says, “Julian Mercer is here. He's working as a visualization intern for the company making the redevelopment proposal. He isn't here on behalf of the town, and he's not authorized to speak for the company's budget or design decisions. Is anyone uncomfortable with him listening?”

The room goes still in a way that makes me reconsider every choice since breakfast.

Mr. Bell looks at me. “Are you going to tell them everything we say?”

“Anything said here isn't confidential, but I'm not recording or reporting personal statements to my employer,” I say. “If you want to discuss private business figures, I can step out. You should assume all formal written comments sent to the town could become public records.”

“That's an actual answer,” Mrs. Alvarez says. “Sit down.”

I take a chair near the door. Nora looks at me for a fraction of a second longer than necessary, then faces the room.

“Last week I thought saving the boardwalk meant signing a petition against the plan,” she says. “I still don't want our businesses erased. But after talking to some of you, I've realized we can't ask the council to choose a different option unless we understand what that option is.”

She pauses, visibly gathering herself.

“So today isn't about voting on whether you agree with me. It's about what a workable alternative would have to answer.”

On the screen she has four headings: SAFETY, COST, ACCESS, BUSINESS CONTINUITY.

I look at them, then at Nora. The girl who had accused me of being a walking zoning violation has just produced a better meeting agenda than half the professional ones I've attended.

Not that I intend to tell her. I'd like to live.

Tess goes over the survey rules. She'll collect quotes with permission, allow people to decline filming, and keep identifying financial details out of the documentary unless an owner explicitly wants them included. Someone asks if she can edit out a comment after filming. Tess says yes for her film, but not for statements already submitted directly to public officials. It's a useful distinction. She makes it without sounding like a lawyer.

Mrs. Alvarez speaks first about the cost of insurance. Mr. Bell describes transporting pinball cabinets that haven't been moved in forty years. Diane talks about the difference between a kiosk's operating profit and its cost to reconstruct, including refrigeration, food-safety compliance and permits. The delivery driver says a longer detour can make it impossible to complete a route during restricted loading hours.

I write none of the figures down. I am trying to listen, not collect anything the company can use in a negotiation.

Then Nora looks directly at me.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You seem unlikely to wait for my permission.”

A few people laugh. She looks relieved that somebody has.

“The repair scenario in the public proposal,” she says. “It says status quo maintenance isn't a viable long-term option. Does that mean the town studied a phased reconstruction of only the worst sections?”

“Not necessarily.” I choose my words carefully. “The packet compares the firm's proposed full redevelopment with certain baseline maintenance assumptions and a preliminary condition survey. I haven't seen a publicly released, independently priced alternative that keeps the North Walk operating during phased work.”

“Could one exist?” asks Diane.

“Possibly. But a licensed team would have to inspect the structure, produce estimates, and identify which sections could stay open. Someone would also need to find a funding and management arrangement. I'm not qualified to tell you what it would cost.”

Nora makes a note. “So the answer isn't no. It's that nobody has shown us an adequate comparison yet.”

“That's a fair description of what I've seen publicly. The town might have additional material. I'd ask for it through the clerk.”

Mrs. Pike, who has been quietly distributing handouts, clears her throat. “The public records request form is on the last page.”

Every head turns toward her. She looks satisfied. Librarians rarely get the dramatic entrance they deserve.

We spend the next hour sorting questions into categories. Not everyone agrees about goals. Mr. Bell wants the arcade retained in its exact location because its electrical work is built into the structure. Mrs. Alvarez wants a viable stall with year-round foot traffic, and she doesn't care whether the floor beneath her is old or new. A hotel employee points out that seasonal workers need affordable transport and bathrooms as much as tourists need a view.

Nora's original plan—SAVE EVERYTHING—is nowhere on the screen. In its place is a list of things worth measuring.

At eleven thirty, Diane pushes the peaches toward the middle of the table. “People can disagree and still eat,” she says.

It's an order, not an invitation.

I reach for a slice. Nora sits two seats away, rubbing her forehead with the end of the red pen. For a brief moment she looks eighteen in the way that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with the effort of carrying a room full of grown adults.

“You okay?” I ask quietly.

She makes a sound between a laugh and a groan. “I thought organizing a meeting meant asking people to come. Nobody warned me I'd have to stop two men from arguing about the diameter of a drainpipe.”

“They were wrong about the drainpipe.”

“Of course you know that.”

“No. They were disagreeing about a measurement neither had. That's why they were wrong to be certain.”

Her mouth twitches. “You have a talent for being infuriatingly precise.”

“It's what I put on my college application.”

“What college?”

“Riverton School of Design. Architecture.”

She takes the information in. “So this isn't just helping with your mother's company?”

“No. I like buildings. Not just the ones my mother pays people to draw.”

“Which ones?”

“The awkward ones. Old train stations with terrible circulation. Schools where people have added on rooms every twenty years. Buildings that look like they were designed by a committee of people who couldn't agree where the front door was.”

“That sounds strangely affectionate.”

“It is.”

She turns her pen in her fingers. “I'm supposed to study public history at St. Arden.”

“Supposed to?”

“Accepted. It's four hours inland.”

“And you don't want to go?”

“I do.” She says it too quickly, then shakes her head. “I think I do. I don't know how to want something far away when things here might fall apart.”

For once I can't construct a neat response. My own acceptance to Riverton sits in my inbox like an open doorway. I've never wondered whether somebody needed me to stay and keep a family business running. The comparison feels unfair.

“I don't know your situation,” I tell her. “But leaving and not caring aren't the same thing.”

She looks at me. It's not the look she gave my rendering or the plans. There's no argument in it. That makes me abruptly aware that we've been talking longer than I intended.

“You sound like my mom,” she says.

“Should I be worried?”

“Probably. She's usually right.”

At noon the tables begin to empty. Tess collects consent slips. Nora photographs the questions on the screen so people who couldn't attend can read them. Mrs. Pike promises to post a neutral link to the town's public records page and a list of relevant archives.

Nora stays behind to stack chairs. I help without asking.

“You don't have to do that,” she says.

“It's a chair. I'm not signing a contract.”

“Your mother might disagree.”

“My mother would ask me to file the chair under miscellaneous expenses.”

She snorts, then drops the pen into her bag. “That was the first meeting I've run where I didn't know how it would end.”

“How did it end?”

“With more work.”

“Sounds like most useful meetings.”

She looks around the room, at the empty cups and the crumbs on the tables. “It started with fifty-six days. I thought if I could get enough people angry before August sixth, we'd be safe.”

“And now?”

“Now there are forty-seven days, and I think we have to get more specific before we get louder.”

Outside the library window, sunlight strikes the brick steps. A child in a bike helmet waits while his father adjusts the strap. Ordinary life continues, apparently without reading any of our meeting notes.

Nora opens her bag and takes out the photo of the preliminary plan. A pale green square marks the place where Flynn's Window stands.

“Can I ask one more thing?” she says.

“That's your favorite hobby.”

“If we're going to challenge this seriously, somebody has to explain what the public drawings actually show. Not what we wish they show. Not what the company wishes people see. The truth.”

“I can explain the conventions on the publicly released sheets,” I say. “With permission from the organizers and with my role disclosed. But I can't prepare your alternative, and I can't disclose anything that isn't public.”

She studies me for a long moment. “I didn't ask you to join our side.”

“I know.”

“Good. Because I'm not sure which side you're on.”

I look toward the empty screen. For my whole life I've thought choosing a side meant deciding who to defend. Lately I am beginning to suspect it means deciding which facts you'll refuse to ignore.

“Neither am I,” I say.

Nora doesn't reply. She folds the map carefully into her notebook, then carries the last stack of chairs to the wall.

When I step outside, my phone vibrates.

MOM: How are the historical plans?

I look back through the glass. Nora is laughing at something Tess has said. The room behind her is a mess of empty coffee cups and hard questions, none of which will fit inside the clean lines of my next rendering.

ME: More complicated than I expected.

I send the message before I can rewrite it into something easier.