She was having trouble with the position of the existing plumbing. She’d talked to the head of a demolition crew, as well as an excavating contractor, and reminded herself she really needed to go down into the basement and look for water damage or any cracks in the foundation, and also check the old behemoth of a furnace, which, no doubt, would have to be replaced. So far she’d avoided descending the hundred-year-old stairs to the unfinished rooms beneath ground level—what had once been a root cellar, laundry, storage, and place for the original wood-burning furnace before it was replaced somewhere around 1960. She’d been reluctant to explore that dark, spider-infested area where she’d been trapped as a child. But wasn’t that exactly one of the reasons she’d come home? To face her old terrors and lay them to rest, to restore this house to its original grandeur as she repaired some of the deepest cracks in her soul? Her cell phone rang and she answered, “Hello?” “Sarah, it’s Aunt Margie!
