Chapter 8 - The Last Visit
Before I left Charleston to board my flight back to Washington D.C., I made one final stop.
I drove a rented sedan through the iron gates of the Voss family estate in Mount Pleasant. The long, winding driveway was lined with grand live oaks dripping with Spanish moss—the same trees I had climbed as a little girl before the world became complicated.
The grand plantation-style mansion looked quiet, almost abandoned. The manicured lawns were unswept, and the heavy mahogany front doors were shut.
I didn't knock. I pushed the door open—it was unlocked—and walked into the grand marble foyer.
The house smelled of stale tobacco, cold coffee, and dry rot.
In the formal library, sitting in a high-backed leather wing chair beside an unlit fireplace, sat Conrad Voss.
He was wearing an old sweater, his eyes hollow, staring blankly at a framed oil painting on the wall. It was a family portrait painted thirty years ago. In it, my mother sat on a velvet stool, Conrad stood tall behind her, ten-year-old Damian stood proudly at his side, and nine-year-old Elise sat on the floor, holding a small toy sailboat in her lap.
Conrad didn't turn his head when I walked in.
“I sold the yacht this morning,” Conrad rasped, his voice sounding like dry paper rubbing together. “The board cleared out my office. The house goes up for auction in thirty days.”
I walked over, standing beside the cold fireplace, looking at the painting.
“You kept the portrait,” I observed quietly.
“I looked at it every day after you left,” Conrad whispered, tears leaking slowly from his bloodshot eyes. “I told myself I kept it to remember my mistake in having an disobedient daughter. But I was lying to myself, Elise.”
He slowly turned his head, looking up at me with an expression of absolute, devastating defeat.
“I kept it because you were the only one holding the boat,” Conrad choked out, pointing a trembling finger at the nine-year-old girl in the painting. “Damian wanted the money. Your mother wanted the status. I wanted the power. But you... you just loved the water.”
I looked at the painting. It was true. I had spent my childhood dreaming of the sea while the rest of my family spent theirs dreaming of status.
“I came to say goodbye, Conrad,” I said softly.
“Will you ever come back?” he asked, his voice shrinking into that of a terrified, lonely old man. “Will you ever call me father again?”
I looked at him for a long, quiet moment.
May you like
“No, Conrad,” I answered gently. “The nineteen-year-old girl who needed your love died in the rain twenty-one years ago. The woman standing here today belongs to the country.”
I turned my back on the silent library, walking out through the marble foyer, leaving the front door open behind me to let the fresh, cool sea breeze sweep away the stale air of the past.
