“It’s over.”
A heavy silence stretched across the cellular network. “Then what transpired?”
“He introduced me as his ‘dear friend’ to three hundred people,” I explained, staring at the concrete pillar ahead of me. “Then he made a public spectacle mocking the money I’ve quietly pumped into his campaign.”
“That boy has absolutely no idea who you are, does he?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“Good,” my grandfather rumbled, the warmth evaporating into something sharper, something dangerous. “Keep it exactly that way until tomorrow morning. Then, burn his entire house down. Legally speaking, of course.”
“The matches are already struck.”
He let out a sharp, deeply satisfied bark of laughter. “That’s my granddaughter. Ring me when the ashes settle.”
I drove home through a torrential downpour, watching the illuminated obelisk of the Washington Monument bleed into the fog. I waited for the heartbreak to set in. I waited for the fury. But there was nothing. No anger, no crippling sadness.
Just a terrifying, crystalline clarity about the demolition I had just set into motion.
