“It’s Robert,” he says again. “I did construction for a while, but it turns out it was a lot smarter to be the guy in charge of building the house than the guy building the house. I got lucky.”

He takes a card from his suit jacket, puts it on the table. It reads BIXBY DEVELOPMENTS. “If any of you are thinking about moving back here, I have some really nice places going up.”

Eric looks at the card. “Yeah, I’ve seen your work,” he says, with more anger than Carrie can understand. “Out in the forest. What’s left of it.”

“Can’t stop progress,” Buzz says, as if he doesn’t catch the tone. “You look great, Eric. I saw your act in Vegas last year. You killed it. Who knew you’d be a star, right?”

Eric was clearly prepared for insults rather than compliments. It short-circuits whatever he was going to say next.

“I know it’s hard to see the old places get torn up, but honestly, we’re fortunate to have so many people coming to Middleton,” Buzz says, helping himself to a glass from the pitcher. “We nearly didn’t make it.”

Buzz tells them about the layoffs, the stores closing on Main Street, the people lining up at the food bank, never making eye contact with each other. He’d blown out his knee during his sophomore year, so he’d lost his scholarship. He worked construction jobs when there were any. Most of the time, there weren’t.

“Some people just gave up,” Buzz says. “You remember Coach Burland?”

Their youth soccer coach when they were all at Middleton Elementary. He took them to Grizzly Bear Pizza after every game, win or lose.

“Well, one day he got out all his Christmas decorations and put them up. Middle of March. Plugs them all in and lights them up. Even that big electronic Santa he had, going ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ on the roof. Remember that?”

They smile. They all remember.

Buzz smiles too. “And then he went inside, took his shotgun, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”

That last part he says while looking right at Danny.

Danny’s face remains perfectly blank.

Buzz laughs and shakes his head quickly.

“Oh, Danny, I’m not blaming you. I mean, you did what you had to do, right? Just business. I’ve made those calls myself. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. There are people who are mad at you, but I’m not one of them. I’m only telling you what happened. None of you were here. You didn’t know.”

There’s nothing in his tone that sounds angry or false. But Carrie thinks she catches a little gleam in the corner of his eye.