Chapter 2 - The Cedar and the Iron
The interior of the Bentley smelled of old leather, cedar wood, and the faint, dry scent of wool that had been dried near an open hearth.
Evelyn sat on the rear bench, wrapped in a dark blue cashmere blanket that Graham had pulled from a compartment beneath the front seat. The heat was blowing out of the floor vents in warm, silent surges, thawing her toes until they felt like they were being pricked by dozens of tiny needles.
Graham sat across from her on the rear-facing seat, his hands resting on his knees. He had taken off his dark gloves, revealing long, liver-spotted fingers with clean, square-cut nails.
"Drink this," he said, handing her a small silver flask with a hinged cap. "It’s broth. Warm. Not liquor."
Evelyn took it with both hands. Her fingers were still shaking so violently that the broth spilled over the rim, leaving a brown stain on the blue wool blanket.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"The house in Milton," Graham said. He glanced out the rain-streaked window as the car swung onto the Storrow Drive ramp, its big engine humming with a deep, muffled growl. "Your grandfather wanted you at the hospital in town, but the press hangs around the entrance on North Washington. We have our own surgical floor at Saint Elizabeth’s."
"My grandfather is dead," Evelyn said flatly. "My father told me he died in ninety-eight. In Maine."
Graham’s mouth twitched—not a smile, but a brief tightening of the skin around his gray eyes. "Your father told you many things, Evelyn, mostly because he wanted you to grow up in a house where people didn't drop off envelopes full of cash on the third of every month. He was an idealist. He thought a girl could grow up better if she didn't know what her last name was worth on the Boston Exchange."
"My last name is Mercer," she said, her voice rising slightly as another sharp, rolling pressure hit her lower stomach. She squeezed her eyes shut, her knuckles white around the silver flask.
"Your name is Vale," Graham said calmly. "And the man who just dropped your clothes into a gutter is named Travis Mercer. He is five hundred thousand dollars in debt to a secondary lender in Revere, though he hasn't told his mother that yet. He thinks he’s going to sell his logistics lease to Holloway Freight to pay it off."
Evelyn opened her eyes. The streetlights along Storrow Drive were flashing past in long, yellow ribbons through the fogged glass. "How do you know that?"
"Because we own Holloway Freight," Graham said. "We bought eighty percent of the shares at three o'clock this afternoon, five minutes after your father got the text from your landlord saying you were three weeks behind on the apartment rent."
He leaned forward, reaching out to adjust the small heater control on the side panel.
"Your husband thought he was marrying a girl from a dead-end family in Southbridge," Graham continued, his voice as matter-of-fact as if he were reading a shipping manifest. "He thought he could kick you down six concrete steps and go back inside to drink whiskey with a woman whose father owns three flatbed trucks in Charlestown. He’s going to find out by eight o'clock tomorrow morning that he doesn't own the truck he drives, he doesn't own the apartment he sleeps in, and he doesn't even own the shirt he was wearing when he dropped your bag."
"I don't want his money," Evelyn said.
"Good," Graham said. "Because he doesn't have any. It belongs to us now."
The car turned south, leaving the river behind and climbing into the dark, tree-lined hills of Milton.
The houses here were different from the brownstones in the South End. They sat three hundred yards back from the road behind high granite walls and old hemlock hedges that caught the snow as it began to mix with the rain. They were houses built in the eighteen-eighties by men who owned granite quarries, textile mills, and three-masted ships that traded with Canton—houses with copper roofs greened by eighty years of salt air and high narrow windows that showed no light to the street.
The Bentley slowed as it approached two massive wrought-iron gates that sat between two stone pillars topped with carved stone owls.
A man in a black oilskin coat stepped out of a small stone gatehouse, saw the red dealer plate, and held up a hand. He didn't ask for identification; he simply pressed a button on an iron post, and the big gates swung inward with a heavy, oiled groan.
The driveway ran through a quarter-mile of dense hemlock woods before opening onto a gravel circle in front of a three-story house made of dark grey slate.
Every window on the ground floor was lit.
As the car pulled up to the low stone steps, the front double doors opened, and four people came down into the rain.
Two were women in white nursing uniforms carrying folded heated blankets. The third was a doctor in a grey tweed jacket with a leather bag under his arm.
The fourth was an old man.
He was ninety, perhaps older, standing five-foot-eight with a back as straight as a pine plank. He wore no coat over his dark wool suit, and his hair was entirely white, brushed back from a high, scarred forehead that made his blue eyes look like two pieces of chipped glass under the porch lamps.
He didn't wait for Graham to open the car door. He reached out with his own hand—large, knotty with arthritis, the skin translucent as parchment—and pulled the heavy door open himself.
"Evelyn," the old man said.
His voice was louder than Graham’s, carrying that old, harsh Boston accent that didn't soften its vowels for anybody.
Evelyn looked up from her cashmere blanket. The pain in her side was constant now, a heavy, dull ache that reached down into her thighs.
"Are you Thomas?" she asked.
May you like
The old man didn't answer. He reached into the car, took her under her arms with a surprisingly firm grip, and pulled her out into the cold night air.
"I’m your grandfather," he said, holding her against his wet coat as the nurses stepped forward with the blankets. "And the man who touched you tonight is going to spend the rest of his life wishing he’d stayed in his mother’s belly."
