Since Sage and I still had to travel for work, and jobs often kept us from home for days at a time, we’d decided Daisy needed some company, so we’d adopted a dog from the local shelter as a surprise for her birthday.
Well… we’d planned to adopt a dog. What we’d ended up with were three dogs, four cats, a couple of chickens, and a goat.
And I had a feeling we were just getting started since Daisy had recently asked me and Sage to fix up the barn behind the house.
As the truck cleared the trees lining the narrow road, I felt my stomach knot at the sight of the old farmhouse. It looked like it would fall over with the next stiff breeze, but I knew we weren’t that lucky.
Which was why I was glad to see the large crane sitting just a few dozen feet from the house. A couple of men in construction vests and hardhats were milling around, drinking coffee.
“It looks like our house,” Sage murmured.
He was right. The structure did look a lot like our house. But even if it’d been in pristine condition, it would have been the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.
I closed my hand over his briefly before I focused on getting the truck parked. Daisy and Sage got out, followed by the three dogs who’d been lying solemnly in the back seat… like they’d known something big was up. Even once they were outside, they stuck by our sides, which was a far cry from their usual raucous behavior. They probably sensed the presence of the inherent evil all around us.
I took Sage’s hand in mine as he wrapped his other arm around Daisy’s shoulders. We went to stand in front of the house. I kept my eyes on Sage as he studied the dilapidated building. “Do you want to go in?” I asked. I had no desire to see the inside, but this whole thing was about closure for Sage. His therapist had said to let him lead and to just be there to support him.
Sage looked at the house for a long time, then shook his head. “No.” He paused, then looked at me with a small smile. “Tell them to tear the fucker down.”
I brushed a brief kiss over his mouth and then waved with my free hand at the guy sitting in the crane’s cab. He got it started and worked the levers that got the large wrecking ball attached to it pulled back. We were far enough away that we didn’t need to worry about being hit by any potential debris. Daisy and I both leaned into Sage’s side as the wrecking ball flew and left a huge, gaping hole in the side of the house.
Then another.
And another.
There was no big celebration as the house was razed until it was nothing but a pile of rubble. Just silent contemplation. I didn’t ask Sage if he felt better because I wasn’t foolish enough to think that demolishing the house would take away the pain. It was just a baby step among many much bigger, more important steps that Sage would have to take over the rest of his life to heal from the wounds that had been inflicted on him in that terrible place.
Truth was, he’d likely never fully heal. He’d just learn to go on.
It was more than enough.
I sent Ronan a silent thank you as I watched the last of the house fall and the next piece of machinery move in to start cleaning up the debris. When I’d hit on the idea of buying up the farmhouse and having it demolished to give Sage some closure, I hadn’t had enough money to buy the property outright, since it was part of a large parcel that the sellers refused to break apart. I’d set aside my pride to ask Ronan if I could borrow the rest of the money from him and he’d instantly said yes. But before I’d been able to buy the property, I’d been contacted by my Realtor and told the property had already been purchased.
I’d been upset, of course, but that had lasted as long as it had taken for Ronan and his husband to show up on our doorstep to hand me the deed to the property a few weeks later. A pre-wedding gift, they’d called it. Admittedly, it’d been hard for me to accept something so generous, but I’d wanted the closure for Sage more than I’d wanted to hang onto my pride. When I’d told Ronan I’d pay him back, he’d told me to pay it forward instead.
It was Sage who’d come up with the idea of what to do with the money we made when we resold the property.
Our plan was to donate every cent to the handful of survivors of the Church of Pure Love that Mav had been able to find during his research. There weren’t a lot of them, but they were all people who’d been forced as kids to endure what Sage and Mouse had. Most had escaped, a few had been rescued by family members. All still suffered from the wounds of the past.