I turned in my seat to glance at her over my shoulder and noticed that a single curl had escaped her hairdo like a loose spring. It made me smile. Annabelle was still in there, behind the pressed linen and product-tamed hair. The curl spiraled just over her ear by her temple. The urge to twist it around my finger was almost more than I could stand.

“Good morning,” I said. “How was the new pretzel packaging received?”

“They loved it,” she said. Her grin was contagious.

I held up my hand and she high-fived it with enthusiasm. I smiled and asked, “You brought what we discussed?”

She patted the laptop bag beside her. “Of course.”

“Excellent,” I said. I don’t think I imagined the faint blush that filled her cheeks.

“Everyone ready?” Jackson asked, climbing back into the driver’s seat. Annabelle and I both nodded. “Then we’re off.”

Jackson steered us out into traffic, and we headed west until we reached Central Avenue and then he turned left and we were headed south. The city no longer resembled the rough-and-tumble place where I had grown up. Downtown, which used to be a wasteland inhabited by the down-and-out, was now a thriving art and food scene. The nearby university had revitalized the several city blocks by building a large portion of its campus in the center of the city. I knew all of this because I had built many of the new apartment complexes that now filled the district.

I used to feel a heady surge of pride every time I drove through the area, as if I’d left my thumbprint on every beam and brick, but now all I felt was futility. What had been the point of it all? Money? Power? None of that mattered when your body shit the bed.

Had I made anyone’s life better by banging up these overpriced monstrosities, or were the residents now bogged down by paying for a home they couldn’t really afford? Meanwhile, the stress of the years I’d worked like a demon had given me an old man’s case of hypertension and likely caused my stroke and would probably bring on another. I knew, in that moment, that I’d give away every last dime I had if I never had to sleep another night with that black cloud of worry hovering above me.

A chain-link fence cordoned off the construction site, but a section had been left open. Convenient. Since I hadn’t been able to reach my sister, to say this was a surprise visit was an understatement. We’d be lucky if she didn’t greet us all with a nail gun strapped to her hip and the attitude to match. If I remembered right from when she was a kid, she could hold a grudge.