He dried a plate. "I like walking into rooms where nobody needs testing."
Alicia considered the answer. "That's a nicer way of saying you still remember."
"Remembering isn't the same as wanting."
She had let the subject drop, but she noticed the distinction. She also noticed what was happening outside the diner, where longtime businesses were disappearing behind construction fencing and new buildings rose with polished facades. A flower shop run by Mrs. Johnson for thirty-one years had become a boutique. The Robinson brothers had closed their barbershop after their rent doubled. A family grocery store that sold produce on credit shut down the week its owner learned a new developer had bought the property.
Derek Collins was involved in at least two of those transactions. His name appeared on glossy signs beside empty properties: COLLINS URBAN RENEWAL, REIMAGINING THE FUTURE. The signs showed coffee shops, rooftop gardens, and carefully staged crowds that looked nothing like the people who still lived on Peach Street. Marcus did not object to new buildings in principle. He objected to plans drawn as though the neighborhood had been vacant before the investors arrived.
One afternoon, six weeks before Derek first grabbed him, a man wearing a tailored blue suit entered Soul Food Sanctuary and declined the menu. He introduced himself as Derek Collins, principal of Collins Development, and asked whether Marcus owned the building. Marcus told him he leased the space and had done so for twenty years. Derek looked around with the expression of someone calculating how much money could be made after every familiar object had been removed.
"We're assembling several properties along this corridor," he said. "This place is at the center of a very promising project. You could retire comfortably if you cooperate."
"I don't plan to retire," Marcus replied.
"Everybody retires eventually."
"Then you'll know where to find me when I change my mind."
Derek laughed politely, but his eyes narrowed. He wrote an amount on the back of a business card and slid it across the counter. Ten thousand dollars, offered as though it were a generosity Marcus ought to thank him for. Marcus glanced at the number, turned the card over, and wrote the diner's hours on it.
"That's when you can come by for breakfast," he said. "The first cup of coffee's on me."
The following week, Derek returned with two associates. A week after that, he appeared outside with an architect measuring the frontage without asking permission. On the third visit, he told Marcus the neighborhood was changing whether he liked it or not. Marcus answered that change was not the same thing as ownership, and Derek's smile finally disappeared.
Now the broken picture lay on a towel behind the counter, and the front bell had gone quiet after the men left. Marcus washed the mud from his hands and began making a fresh batch of cornbread, because hungry people would still be coming through the door at noon. He knew Derek had expected a different reaction. He also knew that the sort of man who enjoyed humiliating an elderly shopkeeper did not interpret restraint as a warning.