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She more than hoped. She knew.
She took a deep breath, and she asked, “Where do you see us in ten years?”
“Ten years?” He glanced at her, then at the water, his forehead furrowing. “Jesus, Clark will be twenty.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Ant will be about done with high school, and Jake will be sixteen. They’ll all be old enough to drive. Who’s the brainless dickhead who thought that up?”
Amber smiled.
His expression darkened. He looked at the water again. “I don’t think I’m gonna be building houses anymore.”
“What will you be doing?”
“Whatever work I can get, if I can keep the company afloat. Or else working for Prange. He’s always saying we should join forces.”
“You hate Dale Prange.”
“I don’t hate him. I don’t hate anybody.”
“Well, you don’t want to work for him. He doesn’t pay his people enough, and he does shoddy detail work. Plus, his wife is kind of a raging bitch.”
Tony smiled faintly. “I know all that.”
“So why? Is it that bad?”
A long pause, and then he nodded. “The margin’s not as good on houses, and with Patrick gone … if he’s not coming back.”
He wasn’t coming back. He was spiraling downward, and it made her stomach sink to think of him. To think of Tony thinking of Patrick, trying—as he had been trying for so long—to figure out what he was supposed to do when there was nothing left to be done.
“So you’re going to do Patrick’s job and give up Mazzara Homes?”
The thought made her heart ache. The idea of Tony giving up his dream.
“I have to. I can’t find enough money, and I keep thinking if I work harder—”
“You can’t work harder. No one can work harder than you work, and it’s killing us.”
His shoulders rolled restlessly. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“I know. But it’s too much.”
“Okay.” He sighed. Closed his eyes. Her hand curled around his, clenched in a fist, his whole body so tense. So tight. “Okay, hon.”
“Couldn’t you sell the commercial end of the business instead? You’ve said before that you have a small fortune in equipment that you only use on Mazzara Construction jobs—sometimes barely use at all.”
“Somebody would have to want to buy it.”
“Prange?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It was my dad’s, you know? He always said you get an asset like that, you hang on to it. If he knew I was thinking about selling machinery, he’d tell me I was a fucking idiot.”
“You’re not your dad.” She gripped his hand harder. “And you’re not an idiot. You were never an idiot. It wasn’t fair for him to tell you that.”
Tony was silent. He never had a bad word to say about his parents.
He kept his eyes on the sand. “I’m not sure it even matters.”
