Chapter 20

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When Darren and I returned home after breakfast—that he paid for since I really didn’t have any money on me—I was surprised to receive a phone call from my mother.

“Your father and I are meeting some friends downtown for lunch and we thought we’d swing by and pay you a visit,” she said.

My parents rarely came to my condo. If they wanted to see me, they usually summoned me to their suburban home. They loathed Chicago and pretty much everything associated with it even though they both had grown up in the city. Why come into the city when everything you need is in the suburbswas their mantra. But they complained about the ‘burbs, too. The taxes were too high, the people drove too fast, blah, blah, blah. They often threatened to pack it in and move to Albuquerque. I wished to God they would.

“Where are you?” I asked my mother.