My mother's voice, so brittle and shrill these days, sent a chill down my spine. I could only imagine how the concrete guy felt.
There was a bit more back and forth, and then their voices dropped, which meant this meeting was almost over. Sure enough, a second later the door opened, and the concrete guy, heavyset and irritated-looking, mumbled past my desk and slammed out of the office, the windows rattling in his wake.
My phone buzzed, and I picked it up. "Macy," my mother said. She sounded exhausted. "Could you bring me a water, please?"
I reached into the small fridge beside my desk to get one, then pushed out my chair and walked to her door. For once, my mother was not on the phone or staring at the computer screen. Instead, she was sitting back in her desk chair, looking out the window at the sign across the street advertising the townhouses. There was a truck parked in front of it, so you could see only the last part: AVAILABLE AUGUST 8TH. SIGN UP FOR YOURS NOW!
I twisted the cap off the water, then slid it across the desk to her. I watched her take a sip, closing her eyes, then said, "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she said, automatically, unthinkingly. "It's always like this at the end of a project. It was like this with the houses, and the apartments. It doesn't matter if it's fifty million-dollar townhouses or one spec house. Everything always gets crazy at the end. You just have to keep going, regardless of how awful it gets. So that's what I do." She sipped at her water again. "Even on days like this, when I'm sure it's going to kill me."
"Mom," I said. "Don't even say that."
She smiled again, a tired smile, the only smile I ever saw from her lately. "It's just an expression," she said, but I still felt uneasy. "I'm fine."
For the rest of the afternoon, I busied myself with the gala guest list. At four forty-five, I sat back in my chair, grateful I only had fourteen minutes and counting before I got to escape. Then, though, two things happened. The phone rang, and my sister walked in.
"Wildflower Ridge Sales," I said, waving at her as she shut the door behind her and walked up to my desk.
"Meez Queensh pleeze es Raffka," the voice on the other end said. Rathka, besides having an accent that made him almost completely incomprehensible, always seemed to talk with his mouth pressed right up to the receiver.
"Right, hold please." I hit the button, then looked up at Caroline, who was standing in front of me, hands clasped together, her face expectant. "Hey," I said. "What's up?"
She took a breath to answer, but then my mother opened her office door, sticking her head out. "Is line one for me?" she asked, then saw my sister. "Caroline, hello. When did you get here?"
My sister looked at her, then back at me. Clearly, she was working up to something. She took in another breath, smiled, then said, "It's done."
There was a second or two of silence as my mother and I processed this. On the phone in front of me, the red light was blinking.
"It's done," my mother repeated slowly.
Caroline was still looking at us, expectant.
"The beach house," I said finally. "Right?"
"Yes!" Caroline clapped her hands, three times fast, like this was a game show and I'd won the showcase showdown. "It's done! And it's fabulous. Fabulous! You have to come and see it. Right now."
"Now?" My mother glanced at the clock, then back at my blinking phone. "But it's—"
"Friday. Quitting time. The weekend." Caroline, clearly, had thought this through. "I've gassed up my car and bought sandwiches so we won't even have to stop for dinner. If we leave in the next half hour, we might even get there for the last of the sunset."
My mother put her hand on my desk. I watched her fingers curl around the edge. "Caroline," she said slowly, "I'm sure it's just wonderful. But I can't get away this weekend. There's just too much work to do."
It took Caroline a second to react to this. "It's just one night," she said after a minute. "You can come back first thing tomorrow."
"I have a meeting in the morning with my superintendents. We're on a very tight schedule. I can't get away."
Caroline lowered her hands to her sides. "But you've been saying that all summer."
"That's because it's been true all summer. It's just a bad time." My mother looked at the phone again, that blinking light, still so insistent. "Who is that holding?"
"Rathka," I said quietly.