Page 3 of Wreck Me

Her family member’s faces held matching worry lines.

“You’ve been saying that for years,” Sadie said. “And you’re always so vague. You won’t even tell us where it is.”

“We could come help you, you know,” Grant said. “I’m good at lifting heavy stuff, and I think our filming schedule is light this week.”

“I can paint and organize things,” Sadie said.

Monique swished her hands through the air as if waving away a bad smell. “Don’t volunteermefor house projects. I’ll pay for a handyman, but I don’t DIY.”

Ginny gave her well-meaning family a look of practiced patience. “Thank you, but none of these projects require lifting or organizing that I can’t handle. And, Monique, I promise I will let you know if I ever need money. You know I don’t like the stuff.”

“I’ve never known anyone so allergic to it,” Monique said.

Ginny shrugged. “Nine out of ten historians say money is the leading cause of war and climate destruction. I know I needsomemoney, but I don’t need very much, and I’m good with that.”

What she did need was two weeks with no outside expectations. Two weeks to do whatever she wanted. Two weeks to be left completely alone so she could putter around her house finishing up the last remaining projects. Two weeks of blessed, lonely heaven.

2

Making the turn onto Placard simultaneously broke Nico Vitale’s heart and pumped it full of adrenaline. His childhood neighborhood, consisting of a single street of about three dozen 1920’s Craftsman-style bungalows, looked like the set for a zombie horror movie. In better times, the houses had been quaint with peaked roofs and doll-house front porches. Now, half the yards sat empty behind broken picket fences, tall grasses erupted through driveways, and graffiti crept across every flat surface like slime mold conquering a petri dish. He’d asked his brother to take the most seriously dilapidated houses down (if only for liability reasons), but apparently Vince hadn’t finished the job. No matter. They would all be gone soon now—andthatwas the reason for the adrenaline.

Every inch of this ‘dystopia Americana’ belonged to Nico and his twin brother, Vince, including the huge, abandoned factory to the north and the enormous crumbling shopping mall to the south. After a significant fire in the 1960’s wiped out several neighborhoods worth of homes, this little forgotten street had ended up tightly sandwiched between industrial and economiczones. Once the Vitale brothers’ bulldozers had their way with it, the contiguous parcel would be worth multi millions.

Nico’s left front tire dipped into a pothole so deep not even the high-tech suspension of his Mercedes Maybach could handle the sudden tilt. He let out a high performance swear as his hands briefly lost the wheel.

“What’s the matter?” Vince, listening via speakerphone, said. “You hit a tumbleweed?”

“Just a larger than average pothole. The only things tumbling around here are plastic bags.” He slowed down and paid more attention as he continued to drive.

“That bad, eh?” Vince said. “You should be here. It’s gorgeous.”

The lilt of chirruping birds, gurgle of a sizable mountain stream, and tinkle of laughter—no doubt from Nico’s two young nephews—were occasionally audible through the phone. These bucolic sounds were occasionally punctuated by the unmistakablezingof a fishing line winging toward hungry, unsuspecting fish. Their Colorado vacation must be treating Vince and his little family well.

“Thatgood,” Nico corrected him. “When was the last time you were home?”

Even as he said the word, it felt foreign in his mouth. This street hadn’t been home to either of them in almost two decades. From their infrequent visits, Vince and Nico had watched as the houses they’d ridden their bikes past and spent time in after school with friends deteriorated bit by bit—grass lots became weed farms, foundations developed zigzag cracks, and rooflines sagged like the jawlines of the stubborn old biddies still living in them.

Two of the most stubborn biddies had been their own mother and Aunt, Claire and Celia, both of whom had refused to move out of the tiny two-bedroom bungalow Nico had grown up in.In the end, there had been a poetic symmetry to it all, because at the same pace with which the neighborhood took its final downward slide, dementia stole away Claire and Celia’s ability to recognize pretty much anything—including the house.

Vince sounded thoughtful. “I haven’t been there since I brought Mom and Aunt Celia to the home. I guess that’s been about, what, five years? Must look super depressing by now.”

“Itwouldlook super depressing if it didn’t look so much like money. And I might be angry at the person who let this area sink to this state, except that person is us.”

“Right, right,” Vince said, with that little extra umph in his voice that told Nico he was staying on task—or trying to. “It’s finally all ours to offer to the highest bidder.”

Nico’s lips stretched into a satisfied smile. “It’s taken us a decade to quietly buy up every property on this street, and then the factory and old shopping mall too. We’ve got sixty acres of the best real estate Hollywood has had in one uninterrupted parcel for probably a hundred years.”

Vince barked a triumphant laugh. “The city’s VIPs will be crying into their single malts when they figure out the long game you’ve pulled off!”

“We’vepulled off, bro. You’re an equal part of this, and you’ve got to stop thinking you’re not.”

“Okay, okay, Nico,” he said. “I’ll try. It’s just, it was your idea, and you kept it going. I only did the things you asked me to here and there.”

“Those were critical things,” Nico said, trying as usual to bolster his brother’s confidence, “and you did them well.”Except for leaving too many of these houses up.“You’ve got good instincts—you just need to start following them more.”

Vince was a terrific guy with good vision, but he lacked initiative, preferring to be told what to do. Because Nico was a tell-people-what-to-do guy, they made a good team, but withthe deal they were about to make, they were both going to be financially set for life. Vince would be able to follow his own visions, and Nico wanted him to believe that he could.

Nico rolled down the windows. The hot wind brushing his skin was tinged with the odor of gasoline and decay. Poignantly absent were the scents of wet laundry drying on lines and fresh baked pies cooling on kitchen sills.

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