The inspection had been done the day before.

A sump pump had been replaced in the corner of the yard.

We’d cleaned the counters of everything you’d use in a day (and all the unopened mail we’d been too busy to examine).

The floors were polished and smooth.

And we were making plans to put it all in a truck and head south with the spoils of our investment to a new life.

But under the pavement, up on the hill, other plans waited to wash away our designs for the future.

With a bang in the dark, it burst from the root veined ground next to the redwood that charmed us so when we first came to this cul-de-sac and whooshed down the hill to boil against the wooden sides of the home where we slept.

From the door I watched the clay colored waters rise and invade the garage.

“I’ve seen worse,” the clean up men said later. But it was bad enough to drown our ideas of tomorrow and force us to finally let go of any ideas of what should come next.

Fucking water main.