Chapter Twenty-Three
CHASE
Drywall dust driftedin lazy currents through the bare corridor, turning the sunlight slicing in from half-hung windows into hazy streaks. The echo of a hammer three doors down synced with my heartbeat—a steady, reassuring thud that cut through the tension webbing my chest. Sometimes I thought the noise of construction was better therapy than any deep-breathing exercise. You could drown in it, let the grind of machines and the bark of a foreman replace whatever the hell you were avoiding.
Like Harper Coleridge.
The first floor of Room Block One was a half-skinned beast this morning—wires exposed, patched over in blue tape, scraps of old insulation sticking to unfinished studs. Every footstep sounded like it echoed straight into the Gulf. The new drywall on the east hall glared against the yellowing, water-stained plaster that had been peeled away in the other rooms. It smelled like rain on concrete, sweat, and the faint tang of salt.
The crew moved with that peculiar dance of practiced urgency of hauling, measuring, bantering with saws and the occasional dirty joke. Foreman Joe stood out—stocky, back permanently bent like the pressure of the entire building settled between his shoulders, a blue bandanna stuffed under a battered ballcap.
As he moved ahead, I lingered, tablet open to yesterday’s punch list, one hand sliding along the smooth curve of fresh copper pipe in Room 1113. Pipes. It seemed everything involved frustrating issues with water lately. Tension tightened my jaw. It wasn’t just the lingering frustration from the play three days ago—that feeling of failing Harper and Finn despite my best intentions. It was compounded by last night. I’d shown up with pasta in a tangible attempt to fix things, to close the distance that had crept between us. But just as we sat down, I’d gotten a call about a possible leak under the pool deck that had to be dealt with immediately. I’d wasted three hours chasing shadows while they ate without me. Another attempt derailed. Another night where work took precedence, leaving the strain between Harper and me unaddressed.
Again.
This gnawing frustration wasn’t just about the relentless crises or the feeling of constantly being two steps behind. It was aboutus. I was acutely aware of the words I hadn’t said, the vulnerability I hadn’t shown, the chasm that each thwarted attempt at connection seemed to widen. It wasn’t that I was deliberately avoiding the hard conversation. Hell, I’d replayed a dozen versions in my head of how to tell her how overwhelmed I felt, how much this all meant, how terrified I was of failing her.
And God, I missed her.
IknewI needed to lay it bare. But every time I even got close to finding a quiet moment, the universe, or at leastthe Sunset Siesta renovation schedule, seemed to conspire against us with another urgent demand. Now the silence felt like my own damn fault, another unaddressed failure in a growing list. And the thought of her thinking I was just avoidingherwas another weight on my already overloaded shoulders.
Joe’s voice boomed from down the hall. Not the usual worksite holler, but sharp, taut. Urgent. “Chase! You’re gonna want to see this. Now.”
I crossed to where three guys had gathered in the north corridor outside Room 1115. Their shoulders closed off a patch of newly exposed wall. Sawdust and splintered wood littered the floor in a haphazard drift, too pale and fine for fresh demo.
Frowning deeply, Joe stepped back so I could see. The paneling—ancient, floral print, now in splintered chunks—had just been peeled from the main load-bearing wall to reveal the bones of the building.
Only these bones looked rotten as old driftwood.
The vertical beams were laced with hollowed-out tunnels, brittle and punky to the touch. Dark tracks meandered along the grain, some of them gaping open enough to fit a finger through.
Time stopped.
My heart stopped.
When I tapped one of the studs with my knuckle, it didn’t eventhunk—it gave off a powdery sigh, a puff of dust drifting down to the sill. I pressed a bit harder. Wood collapsed under my thumb, leaving a soft hole the size of a marble.
All of it—the original framing, the joinery, the sill plate near the floor—looked like it had survived a war fought by termites and slow rot. The exterior cladding might as wellhave been a bandage on a bullet wound. My chest went cold as my gaze inevitably drifted upward.
Joe didn’t hide the quiver in his voice. “Holy hell, Chase. Look at this. This whole section… it’s damn near sawdust inside.”
Years of training flared to life, triage protocol beating in time with my now racing pulse. Load path, redundancy, shear, how much mass could even one compromised stud carry before the dominoes fell. This wall ran dead center, the main support for everything above, second floor and roof line.
All of it.
The damage here, hidden by decades of surface-level repairs, meant any remaining contingency we’d written into the budget was about to go up in smoke.
I crouched low, pressing fingers into the swollen edge where the sill plate met the concrete foundation. The wood crumbled, layers peeling away in damp, stringy ribbons. I glanced up—every joist pocket above looked similarly suspect, the fasteners mottled with rust, new insulation jammed into spaces that should’ve been dry. Someone had repaired the outer skin half a dozen times but never bothered to probe the heart.
“Jesus.” The dread inside me didn’t flare, exactly—it crept. Cold and hard and inevitable. My responsibility as architect and, hell, as a partner in this place, was suddenly crushing. Finishes were cosmetic. This was existential. I tilted my head up and followed the imaginary path of first floor, to second floor, to attic, to roof. If the load path failed here, everything above would sag, maybe collapse. Best-case scenario was shutting down half the building, emergency shoring, specialized crews, engineer on speed dial.
Worst case? I wasn’t ready to name it.
I pushed to my feet. “Joe, no more demo on this line until I’ve got a structural engineer on site. Set up temporary shoring on both sides. Brace the ceiling joists. And get photos. Lots. I want every inch of damage documented.”
“You got it, boss.” Joe squatted next to a sickly beam, whistling low, thumb gouging the spongy edge with visible unease.
I thumbed my phone, scrolling to the structural engineer’s contact—Dr. Elena Alvarez, our mercifully on-call specialist from Key West. Her phone went straight to voicemail. I kept it brief, voice as steady as I could. “Elena, it’s Chase Ashworth. We have major termite damage on a load-bearing wall in Room Block One at Sunset Siesta. North corridor, Room 1115. I need an urgent assessment for immediate shoring and full replacement protocol. Call me back ASAP.”
