37. Sebastian
THIRTY-SEVEN
SEBASTIAN
“Hey,” I said when my mother answered the phone.
“Hi, Sebastian. Are you still in New Elwood?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I’ll be leaving by the end of the week. I was calling to let you know that Radcliffe House is coming down tomorrow.”
I had asked myself over and over if there was another way. And over and over the answer was no. The demo company I hired had an opening for this week, so I took it. Especially since Theo had been up my ass since our last meeting about moving things along as soon as possible.
I still hadn’t sent him the signed contract. I’d kept it in my files like a stack of dynamite, but I hadn’t lit the fuse. Not yet.
Still, I’d organized the demolition.
The house would come down, and then I’d sign the land over to him, and then it would be done. Over.
The outside of the house was already shrouded in scaffolding to protect neighboring properties and keep people from being too nosy. From the inside, I could see a thick galvanized steel cross-brace cutting across my kitchen window. It looked like the bars of a prison. I’d moved my things to a hotel in town and was doing one final walkthrough before this place turned to kindling.
This afternoon, the contractor would drop off some machinery. And bright and early tomorrow morning, as soon as the noise ordinances permitted, the building would be coming down.
It needed to happen.
After all, my hands were tied. I couldn’t save Radcliffe House Apartments for Charlie. And since she’d already moved out, it was safe to assume that she’d given up the fight. And she’d given me up in the process.
The day she’d moved out, I’d heard noises upstairs after being out all day. There was a moment when I thought she was back. I’d had this vain, foolish hope that maybe what was broken between us could be fixed.
I’d knocked and pounded and called out, but she hadn’t answered. Then I tried the doorknob. Open.
The feeling that went through me when I took in the empty apartment… It was hard to describe what that did to me. My fingertips went cold, and a hollowness echoed in the pit of my stomach. I felt heavy and light at once.
The floors had creaked as I paced the length of the attic, eyes tracing the lines of the mansard roof she loved so much, fingers trailing over the rolled edges of the tub. I’d stared at the spot on the wall where the ink from her pen had dried. Bloodred, dripping down the paint like the house itself had a mortal wound.
Then my assistant in Arlington had informed me that she’d taken the cash. I walked to the kitchen counter and saw her keys there, right where that daisy-patterned plate had fallen and shattered.
She was gone. Really gone.
It had been what I’d wanted. For us both to move on, for me to get out of this town for good.
I’d made my choice.
Radcliffe House was coming down.
“Oh, wow.” Mom let out a sigh that I couldn’t quite read.
“What does that mean?” My voice was a whip-crack. I couldn’t deal with another person telling me I was making a mistake. Couldn’t deal with my mother, of all people, pushing back on this decision.
“It just sort of feels like once that house is gone, then that means my mother really is gone too. That was a special place for her.”
“Why do you care?” My voice was harsh. “After what she did to us, why does it matter?”
A sigh ruffled through the phone. “She was still my mother.”
I glared at the old walls around me. “She blamed you for the fire. She wanted us to kowtow to her. She never spoke to you again after we left, for God’s sake!”
“She was a stubborn old bat, that’s for sure.”
“How can you be so calm about this?” I shoved a hand through my hair. “I thought you’d be grateful that I’m tearing it down.”
There was a pause. I leaned against the kitchen table and pinched the bridge of my nose. A headache bloomed behind my eyes.
“Sebastian?”
I grunted.
“Are you tearing that old house down for my sake?” Her voice was too gentle.
I wanted to cry. My eyes stung as I stared at the scarred floorboards between my feet.
When I didn’t answer, my mother asked, “Honey, are you all right?” Why did moms always know when something was up, even when you did your best to hide it? It was like some kind of superpower.
“Yeah, fine.” I wasn’t fine. But my thirty days were up. The properties were officially mine. And all I wanted to do was get this over with so I could go back to my life in Arlington, assume my new role as head of The Bach Company, and try to forget about all of it. Forget about the woman who hadn’t stopped invading my thoughts every waking moment of my life since she walked away.
That’s what I wanted to do. Walk away. It was the only way to put all of this behind me. Take the money and finally make my mother whole.
“You sure?” Mom pushed.
“Yes, I’ll see you later this week.”
I ended the call before she could probe me any more with questions. The truth was I wanted to tell her about Charlie. I wanted her to know that I’d found someone I actually liked. Even if the woman hated me now.
But what use would that be? Charlie and I were never going to be together. I was getting what I’d come here to get, and Charlie would just have to deal with it. That’s how things had to be. It was the only way to make things right.
I looked around the place I’d called home for the last month, staring at the patched hole in the ceiling. In twenty-four hours, this old house will be nothing but a memory. Pain bloomed in my chest remembering Charlie’s lips, her laugh, her fiery gaze.
I couldn’t help myself and walked up to her empty apartment. Tearing my fingernails out with a pair of rusty pliers would have been less torturous. Everywhere I looked, I saw the rickety old house through Charlie’s rose-colored lenses.
My phone rang. It was the demolition contractor. “Yeah,” I answered.
“Excavator’s being dropped off in twenty. I’ve got guys with the truck who will remove a section of fence so we can get him into the backyard.”
“See you soon,” I said.
Sure enough, twenty minutes later, a flatbed truck pulled up around the house while workers tore down a big section of the back fence. A driver got into the excavator and navigated it down the ramp and through the opening in the fence. Its tracks tore up grass like giant steel teeth, and I watched its progress with grim-faced silence.
They were efficient. Within an hour, I was shaking the contractor’s hand and watching the truck drive away, its empty bed bouncing slightly as it dropped off the curb and onto the street once more. The excavator loomed in the backyard like a yellow monster, folded up and dormant as it waited for its chance to make its move.
It hit me, then, that I might be making a terrible, irrevocable mistake.
I needed a drink. I headed over to Sullivan’s.
My eyes scanned the dim interior, and I knew I was looking for a red-haired, blue-eyed woman. Like a beggar, I was holding my hands out for a scrap of her. Just a glimpse. But that was wishful thinking. Charlie wasn’t there.
Rex was, though, having a cold draft beer and a basket of French fries.
“Hey, Rex,” I said, taking the barstool next to him and ordering a beer.
“Bastian, what’s up man?” he greeted me with a smile. Rex was likely the only person in New Elwood that didn’t loathe my existence.
I let out a sigh and dropped my head into my hands, thumbs massaging my temples. “Not much.”
“Charlie still won’t talk to you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nope, and after tomorrow, I doubt she will again.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“The demo. It’s all going down tomorrow.”
Rex’s brows shot up his forehead as if he was surprised to hear I was actually going through with it. “That’s intense.”
“Yeah, but you know, the house isn’t up to code,” I offered, a half-hearted attempt to get someone on my side.
“That and it’s on the edge of Sinclair’s vineyard. I’m sure he paid a pretty penny for that.”
My gaze snapped to his. “Where’d you hear that?”
“It’s a small town, Bastian. People talk.”
“Oh, yeah, and what are they saying?” I asked.
Rex shook his head, avoiding my stare. “Nothing good.” It figured. Well, only a couple more days and the big, bad real estate developer grandson would be long gone. “But I know those are just rumors. You’re not a bad guy.”
God. Those words were a dagger to my chest, because I didn’t believe him. I was a bad guy. I’d kicked an old man and a young woman out of their home for a stack of cash. I did that. I was doing it.
The bartender dropped my beer in front of me, and I traced the base of it with my fingers. “It definitely feels like I am these days. Everyone thinks I don’t care. That I’m only after the money, but that’s not true. It’s so much more complicated than that. If everyone knew the whole story, they would see what I see.”
“Which is what?” he asked.
“That I don’t have a choice.”
He huffed a laugh. “Man, you always have a choice. Some choices are just easier than others. But you don’t have to sell a thing to Sinclair. He’s just a bully.”
Rex was right—and wrong. I didn’t have to go through with the deal. No one was holding a gun to my head, but I wanted so badly to right my grandmother’s wrongs. To heal my mother’s pain, pain that I’d watched her suffer through for years. It wasn’t the easy choice, but it was the right one.
I wished there were another way. “Even if that were the case, all of these properties would just keep me tied to New Elwood.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t belong here.”
“You sure about that?” he asked.
I had to be. The clock was ticking. The papers had all been drawn up. The contractors were starting in a matter of hours. There wasn’t any turning back now.