Chapter 13
The city council officially announced their final and highly anticipated decision three days later,
voting almost completely unanimously to award the massive riverbank project to Elise Grace Properties,
and entirely rejecting the cold and corporate bid submitted by Apex Holdings.
It was an absolutely monumental and incredibly historic victory for our firm,
a clear and undeniable public validation of our deeply ethical business practices,
and a massive personal triumph over the dark and lingering shadows of my past.
The local newspapers quickly changed their previously hostile and critical tunes entirely,
praising our highly innovative and community-focused approach to urban development,
and completely hailing Sabina as an incredibly brilliant and rising architectural star.
We celebrated the massive win very quietly at our little yellow house,
ordering entirely too much greasy takeout from our favorite local Italian restaurant,
and laughing incredibly loudly until our sides physically ached with genuine joy.
My mother called me late that evening,
her voice thick with incredibly happy and deeply emotional tears,
telling me repeatedly how unbelievably proud my late father would have absolutely been.
I thanked her very softly,
feeling a massive and incredibly heavy weight permanently lift completely off my tired shoulders,
knowing fully that I had finally and truly honored the massive sacrifices my parents had made.
Elias poured us each a large and generous glass of incredibly expensive red wine,
a rare and highly indulgent treat that he had secretly been saving for a very special occasion,
and raised his beautiful glass in a quiet and highly meaningful toast.
He toasted proudly to the incredibly strong and absolutely unyielding women in his life,
to my fierce and absolute determination,
and to Sabina's incredibly brilliant and highly expansive future.
We happily clinked our fragile glasses together,
the incredibly sweet and musical sound ringing clearly and beautifully through the quiet kitchen,
a perfect and highly fitting soundtrack to our massive and undeniable success.
The incredibly hard and exhausting work began almost immediately the very next morning,
with endless and complicated meetings with various structural engineers and massive construction crews,
as we rapidly prepared to completely break ground on the massive riverbank site.
Sabina was practically vibrating with incredibly high levels of pure and unadulterated energy,
spending incredibly long and exhausting hours carefully refining her architectural models,
and actively collaborating with the various contractors to ensure every single detail was entirely perfect.
She had decided completely and entirely to officially delay her formal college education,
choosing instead to actively work completely full-time on this incredibly historic project,
arguing fiercely that no expensive university could ever possibly teach her,
what she was currently learning by actually building something completely massive and real.
I fully supported her bold and highly unconventional decision,
knowing deeply that she possessed an incredibly rare and truly raw natural talent,
and that chaining her to a small and stuffy classroom desk would be a massive tragic waste.
As the incredibly busy weeks rapidly turned into completely exhausting months,
the massive and completely abandoned industrial riverbank complex began to slowly and beautifully transform.
Huge and incredibly heavy bulldozers aggressively cleared away the massive piles of rusted debris,
while highly skilled construction workers carefully preserved the beautiful and historic brick facades,
seamlessly blending the incredibly rich history of the old and forgotten buildings,
with Sabina's highly modern and incredibly sustainable architectural vision.
I frequently visited the busy and chaotic construction site,
wearing a heavy and protective white hard hat and sturdy steel-toed leather boots,
watching proudly as the massive and incredibly strong steel frameworks slowly began to rise.
It was incredibly and surprisingly deeply therapeutic for me,
watching something truly beautiful and totally functional being built firmly from the ground up,
a massive and highly physical manifestation of my entire complicated life's difficult journey.
One particularly cold and extremely windy afternoon,
while I was carefully reviewing a stack of complex safety reports in the temporary site trailer,
I noticed a tall and familiar figure standing quietly near the heavily fenced perimeter.
It was Thatcher,
wearing a highly simple and slightly worn heavy winter coat,
just standing completely silently and actively watching the massive cranes moving heavy materials.
I cautiously stepped completely out of the warm trailer,
walking very slowly across the incredibly muddy and highly uneven frozen ground,
until I reached the cold and heavy chain-link fence separating us completely.
He looked deeply at me,
his highly recognizable face significantly older and much more heavily lined than I remembered,
and offered a very small and incredibly hesitant, almost sad, smile.
He told me very quietly that he had recently read about the massive project in the news,
and that he had completely and truly wanted to see the incredible progress for himself.
He said that the ambitious design was incredibly and truly beautiful,
and asked very softly if Sabina was actually the one who had drawn the impressive plans.
I proudly told him that she was indeed the absolute genius completely behind the entire design,
and a very strange and highly complicated mixture of deep pride and profound regret,
flashed incredibly quickly across his deeply tired and incredibly sad eyes.
He did not ask aggressively to completely see her,
and he absolutely did not make any sudden or highly unreasonable demands on my time,
which showed me clearly that he had truly and finally learned his absolute boundaries.
He just nodded his head very slowly,
deeply acknowledging the massive and completely undeniable success we had clearly achieved without him,
and quietly wished me absolutely the very best of luck with the massive construction.
As he turned slowly around and walked quietly away into the cold afternoon wind,
I felt absolutely zero lingering anger or residual resentment holding me down.
He was completely and entirely a ghost from a completely totally different lifetime,
a man who had completely failed to aggressively protect me when it absolutely mattered the most,
but whose massive failure had ultimately and ironically forced me to completely save myself.
I walked incredibly happily back to the incredibly warm and busy construction trailer,
May you like
leaving the cold and completely dead past firmly and securely entirely behind me,
and actively turned my complete and absolute focus entirely toward our incredibly bright future.
