Hardaway blinked, a little stunned.
"I wasn't born in some high-and-mighty Manhattan. Just like you, I grew up in a trashy neighborhood in Chicago. My father... he used to be a good dad, but after an injury forced him to retire, he became an alcoholic asshole. And my mother? She wasn't some lawyer. She was just a poor woman who worked two jobs a day, struggling to raise me."
"And brownies? When I was a kid, most days I ate the leftovers she brought back from the restaurant where she worked. One time, I even found a set of dentures in them."
"Oh, and Nick? That bastard's dad cleaned a bank for a living, and his favorite thing to do after school was chase me down and beat me up. And don't you dare talk to me about being abandoned by your parents. I wished my bastard father *would* abandon us, instead of being a good-for-nothing who got drunk every day and took out his misery on us, only to end up drowned in a river, leaving us to borrow money for his burial."
