Within thirty minutes, the quiet of the morning was shattered by the deafening roar of concrete being broken apart.

I stood near the edge of the property, watching.

Huge cracks spiderwebbed across the smooth concrete.

The slab that Richard had insisted on pouring—the foundation of his grand design—was crumbling into grey dust.

A worker in a hard hat began loading the chunks into a dump truck.

The ground shook slightly beneath my boots.

I felt a deep sense of satisfaction with every strike of the hammer.

“It’s going faster than I thought,” Nathan said, standing beside me.

“Good,” I said. “We don’t have much time.”

“The grader is coming tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll have the soil delivered by Wednesday afternoon. It’s going to look clean, Alexandra.”

“That’s exactly what I want,” I said.

I checked my watch.

It was eleven o’clock.

My children’s flight was scheduled to land at one.

“I have to go,” I told Nathan. “Keep me updated.”

“Will do,” he said. “Go get your kids.”

I drove to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

The terminal was crowded with travelers.