Page 114 of A Fool's Game

He scoffs and takes another step back. “I’m not that old.”

I shake my head, preparing to lean into the lightened mood with another joke, but his eyes catch on his watch.

“I’m going to try to get downtown to my hotel before traffic, but if you’re free tomorrow, let’s get together. I’m going to be looking at a few places in the city?—”

“What time is it?” I interrupt him, panic rising in my chest and turning my vision gray.

“Ten to five?—”

“Oh my god. I have to go.” I snatch up my coat and run from the apartment, straight into the black car waiting for my father at the curb.

I shout the address at the driver, already knowing it’s too late.

Chapter 38

Taylor

Drip, drip, drip.

The pitch of the water filling the basement around my feet shifts as it gets slowly deeper. It’s all I hear now that I shut the noisy pump off, no longer bothering to try to keep it dry in here.

I run my finger up the jagged crack in the cement foundation. I swear it’s gotten longer since I’ve been down here. Has it been hours or days? With no daylight, and no one daring to come down those stairs, it’s easy to lose track of time.

The meditative drip does nothing to calm the thoughts raging through my mind.

It’s over.

I’ve failed.

I should have protected my family home. The house my great grandparents built by hand will now be demolished and probably replaced by high rise apartments.

Built by hand.

There’s another kind of failure.

It’s touted as such an achievement, but I bet we wouldn’t bein this mess today if my penny-pinching ancestors had just hired a damn professional to do the job.

I jump as the door at the top of the stairs bangs open but manage to settle back into my statue-still glowering by the time I hear footsteps hurrying down the stairs.

“Taylor?”

I knew it would be him.

He’s too late, but I knew he’d still come.

“I’m so sorry. Oh my god. Your mom told me?—”

“Don’t, okay? Save it.”

He stops on the bottom step and takes in the scene down here. It’s not somewhere I’ve brought him before, or anyone, not wanting to have my determination derailed by the gaping mouths of onlookers telling me it was a lost cause.

It wasn’t.

It is now, but it wasn’t all along.

It was my cause.

I could have saved it.

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