All Chapters of Before The Boardwalk Closes(A NOVEL): Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

JULIANMy mother can make an empty hotel conference room feel like a courtroom.She sets two cups of coffee on the table, slides a folder between them, and waits until I put down my pencil before she speaks.“The town posted the preliminary packet this morning,” she says. “There's already a petition asking us to leave.”“How many signatures?”“Seventy-three.”“That's impressive for before breakfast.”“It's a serious project, Julian.”“I know.”“You say that in the voice you use when you think I don't.”She is wearing a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly to her elbows. There is a faint crease between her eyebrows, the one that appears whenever she is working three problems ahead of everyone in the room. I have watched that crease make its way through hurricanes, budget overruns, and one Christmas when the power went out with twelve people due for dinner.I used to think my mother knew how to fix everything. Then I grew old enough to see how much of her job involves choosi

JULIANThe first mistake on the information-session display is a picture of a family eating ice cream in a plaza that doesn't exist.It's my rendering, in the sense that I assembled the people and the shadows and the benches from a collection of approved design assets. Nobody is real. There is no ice cream shop. And the bench closest to the camera occupies roughly the same coordinates as Flynn's Window.I stand in the back of the community center with a roll of painter's tape in my hand, staring at the display board while a ceiling fan pushes warm air across the folding chairs.“That one needs the new caption,” I say.Mara Chen, our project's planning consultant, doesn't look up from her laptop. “It has the preliminary label.”“On the bottom. In eight-point type.”“That's the standard template.”“It's a fictional family enjoying a fictional sundae outside a fictional business. The public should at least be told which parts are fictional.”Now she looks up. Mara has the expression of s

JULIANThe 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 proje