Chapter 4 - The Rent Notice
By noon, Naomi had been fired, threatened online, and offered three hundred dollars to tell her story on a morning talk show.
She turned off her phone. It kept vibrating against the kitchen table like a trapped insect.
Their apartment was on the third floor of a brick building in West Town. Rosa's framed nursing-school acceptance letter still hung over the microwave. She hadn't gotten to finish those classes either. Their family had become very good at stopping halfway toward better things.
Isabel pulled a letter from beneath the fruit bowl. "I didn't want you reading this while you were in jail."
Naomi unfolded it. The building's new ownership group planned major renovations. Tenants would need to vacate within thirty days. At the bottom was a familiar phrase: a Sterling Properties affiliate.
"They bought this place?" Naomi asked.
"Last month. The guy upstairs says they're offering money to leave early."
There was no way to mistake the timing. Rosa had died at one Sterling property. Now her daughters were about to lose their home to another.
Isabel leaned against the counter, breathing a little too fast. "I can get a job after school."
"No. Your job is school."
"You don't have a job now."
"I'll find one."
"You always say that."
The words hurt because they weren't meant to. Naomi remembered Isabel at thirteen, waiting on the steps outside Riverside Towers, her face streaked with soot. Rosa had gone back into the building for a little boy named Aaron. The firefighters carried Aaron out. They carried Rosa out later.
"I'm sorry," Isabel said.
Naomi shook her head. "You're allowed to be scared."
A knock sounded. Their neighbor, Mr. Bello, stood outside holding his tablet. He was seventy-two and wore the same faded Cubs cap every day.
"Thought you ought to see this," he said.
On the screen, Vanessa Sterling faced a bank of microphones, one cheek carefully dusted pink. "Violence has no place at a charity event," she declared. "We won't let one disgruntled employee distract us from our commitment to safe housing."
A reporter asked about the fire that had killed Rosa Reyes.
Vanessa's expression softened into practiced sympathy. "Unfortunately, that tragedy was caused by employee negligence."
May you like
Naomi watched her dead mother blamed again in front of a thousand cameras. Then the banner beneath Vanessa changed to BREAKING: CITY TO VOTE ON $84 MILLION STERLING HOUSING DEAL FRIDAY.
Friday was four days away.
