Chapter 7 - The Cleansing of Ocean Drive
By 2:00 P.M. on Christmas afternoon, the storm had passed out to sea, leaving behind a sky of crystalline, washed-blue brilliance that made the snow-covered cliffs of Newport glisten like crushed diamonds.
The iron gates of the Ocean Drive estate stood wide open.
In the circular driveway where seventy-three luxury cars had been parked the night before, two large commercial moving vans were parked beside three Rhode Island State Police cruisers.
Uniformed troopers stood at the front doors, checking clipboards as professional movers carried out five large wardrobe trunks containing Preston Vale’s clothing, his golf clubs, his personal hunting rifles (which were immediately secured by the troopers under the weapons surrender order), and three boxes of family portraits from his childhood.
Inside the grand foyer, the air was cold, the front double doors pinned open to clear the stale smell of spilled scotch and expensive perfume.
Mrs. Alvarez was on her knees near the base of the imperial curved staircase, scrubbing the Carrara marble with a bucket of steaming water, pine oil, and coarse sea salt.
"Leave that, Maria," I said, walking through the doorway supported by Luke’s arm. "You shouldn't be cleaning that floor today."
Mrs. Alvarez looked up, her gray hair pulled back in a neat bun, her face smudged with sweat despite the cold air. She pointed to a faint, dark smear on the stone where my heel had caught the edge of the riser during the fall.
"No, Miss Grace," she said firmly, dipping her brush back into the water. "This stain does not stay in this house. We wash the bad blood out of the stone today. When that little girl comes home from the hospital next month, she will crawl on clean marble. Not on his."
I knelt down beside her—slowly, being careful of the deep purple ache in my right hip—and placed my hand over hers on the wooden scrub brush. We pushed together, the bristled wood scouring the stone until the dark mark dissolved into the suds and disappeared down the rinse drain.
Luke walked over to the grand fireplace.
He set a six-foot aluminum stepladder onto the hearthstones, climbed to the fourth rung, and reached up to the carved wooden angel mounted above the limestone mantel.
With a small Phillips-head screwdriver, he carefully removed the two mounting brackets that held the carving to the chimney breast. The angel came away cleanly, revealing the tiny, brass-encased optical lens nestled into the hollow of the left wing, connected to a thin, silver-sheathed fiber-optic thread that disappeared into the mortar joint.
Luke climbed down, carrying the angel in both hands like a sacred relic.
He held it out to me.
The wood was old white pine, carved by hand in the maritime folk style of coastal Maine, its surface rubbed with raw linseed oil until it held a soft, golden sheen. In the center of the left wing, no larger than the head of a match, the tiny aperture caught the afternoon sunlight streaming through the arched windows.
"What do you want to do with it, Grace?" Luke asked softly.
I ran my thumb over the grain of the wood—over the marks left by our father’s chisels three years ago in his drafty workshop behind the house in Jamestown. I remembered him sitting at the workbench with his oxygen cannula taped to his cheeks, coughing quietly as he hollowed out the pine with a curved gouge, telling me that an angel was only useful if she had eyes to see through the fog.
"We keep it," I said. "We mount it in the nursery. Exactly where my daughter can see it from her crib."
Nathan walked into the foyer from the rear terrace, holding a stack of mail and two legal couriers that had just arrived from the city.
"The federal court in Boston just issued an emergency freeze on the offshore accounts in Grand Cayman," Nathan announced, his eyes bright with that old, fierce energy he used to carry on the docks. "They caught Sienna’s brother trying to liquidate four million dollars from the maritime escrow account in Nassau. The Department of Justice has added sixty counts of federal wire fraud to the indictment."
He stopped, looking at me sitting on the hearth bench, holding the wooden angel in my lap.
Nathan walked over, dropped to one knee in front of me, and took my cold hands in his.
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"I’m sorry, Grace," he whispered, his voice cracking for the first time in twenty-four hours. "I’m sorry Luke and I stayed away so long. When Preston told us you didn't want our calls... when he had his lawyers send that cease-and-desist letter claiming we were harassing you for money... we should have kicked the front door down. We should have dragged you out of this house two years ago."
"You came when I called, Nathan," I said, leaning forward until my forehead touched his leather jacket, feeling the warmth of my family surround me like an unassailable fortress. "You and Luke came through a blizzard on Christmas Eve. That’s all that matters. That’s all that will ever matter."
