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FORTY
SEBASTIAN
The excavator unfurled in a hiss of hydraulics and grinding metal. Inside the cab, the operator watched on, a bored expression painted on his face. Rotating the treads, he moved the machine to churn up grass and dirt and weeds in the backyard as he moved to hook a large bucket onto the end of its arm. The bucket extended then curled like the limb of an insect preparing to strike its prey.
I watched as acid churned in my gut. Beside me, my mother stood with her hands clasped in front of her, wearing a borrowed high-visibility vest and hard hat. We hadn’t been able to walk through the building, since it had already been handed over to the contractor’s care by the time we got on site. But I’d watched her study the back of the house, admiring all the details I’d taken for granted.
The contractor approached. He was a thick, solid man with a beard that crawled up his cheeks nearly to his eyes and all the way down past the collar of his shirt. His own fluorescent vest was so dirty as to hardly qualify as high-vis anymore, his hard hat covered in stickers. He walked over fresh-turned earth and debris like it was his domain, boots scarred and dirty. “Gas and electric’s disconnected,” he told us. “We’re good to go.”
“Oh, gosh,” my mother muttered. “Will it be very loud?”
“When the windows shatter, it might give you a jump,” the man replied, grinning. He obviously loved his job. “But this place’ll come down easy. The bucket’ll rip right through it. Probably won’t need the jaws at all.” He nodded to the other attachment they’d brought with the excavators, the black jaws stolen from some steel beast.
A huge truck rumbled down the alley behind us, then backed into the gap in the fence. Its trailer was empty and waiting for the debris the excavator would soon load into it. All the kindling, century-old insulation, glass, and materials that made up the oldest house in New Elwood.
The detritus that had somehow added up to something more for Charlie and Albert—and, hell, for me too. It had been a home. It had been a repository for memories and love and life.
Charlie wanted nothing to do with me, that was obvious. So all I had left was the deal of a lifetime. This was for The Bach Company. My dream opportunity to build something bigger than myself, to take the next step.
To give my mother what she?—
My mind stuttered. The story I’d been telling myself all this time had changed. My mother didn’t want what I offered. She didn’t need shares in my new company. Her and Dad’s retirement was secure. She’d forgiven Lydia, and she didn’t want me to cling onto bitterness that would eventually turn to poison in my veins.
The excavator crawled over the backyard, the noise and vibration of it rattling my bones.
Charlie didn’t even want to hear my reasoning. She hadn’t wanted my explanation or my apologies. She’d hardly even looked at me.
This was all I had. Just this house, and this business deal, and The Bach Company.
“Have I missed anything?” A hand landed on my shoulder, causing me to stumble forward. I glanced over at a grinning Sinclair, whose dark eyes glittered with undisguised lust. “Nothing like a big machine tearing things to pieces, is there?”
“Amen to that,” the contractor said, then instructed all of us to stay behind the old fenceline and away from the action before marching across the yard to start acting as a spotter for the excavator.
“Still waiting on that signed contract,” Sinclair noted, tearing his gaze away from the destruction soon to come. “I’m assuming this”—he gestured to the excavator, the scaffolding, the men in hard hats—“means I should expect it in my inbox any minute?”
When I didn’t immediately answer, his eyes narrowed. My mother let out a soft gasp, and I followed her gaze to watch the excavator extend its arm toward the house. The bucket lifted with a mechanical groan, its teeth shining in the light of the morning sun like the fangs of a hungry wolf.
My heart sped up, sending my pulse pounding in my fingertips and knees and neck. My vision narrowed to that burnished steel bucket, polished to a high shine near the teeth where it would dig into the house, dull in the curve where it would carry shingles and splinters to the waiting dump truck.
“Anderson?” Sinclair’s voice sounded as if it were coming from a faraway distance. I could hardly register it. Nothing registered except those steel teeth, that yellow arm, the flick of the operator’s hands on the controls in my peripheral vision.
The bucket descended over a mismatched patch on the near-vertical part of the mansard roof that Albert must have repaired a while ago. The thudding of my heart became so loud it drowned out the hissing and groaning and grinding of the excavator.
But it didn’t drown out the crunch.
The excavator tore a bite out of the back of the house, and I let out a gasp of pain, feeling it in my bones. The dormer window shattered in an explosion of glittering glass, and wood and plaster and shingles fell to the ground in a horrible, grisly rain.
Charlie’s bath sat in the ragged opening, white and proud in the face of the destruction that revealed it.
The bath she’d soaked in when she read my proposals right before she fell through my ceiling and into my bed. The bath that had brought her into my life, naked and furious and perfect.
The bucket rose again, glaring in the sun, angled to tear another chunk out of the roof.
I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t breathe.
I dropped my gaze to the window with its stained glass that had looked like glowing gems from the inside. It was dull and lifeless now, where it sat in the shadows.
And soon it wouldn’t exist at all.
