Chapter 9 - The Trial of Roots
Security in an old house is an illusion; the past never knocks, it simply walks through the drafty sills.
Two weeks before Christmas, the illusion cracked.
It arrived in the form of a black city-owned sedan that pulled up the driveway at three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon. Two people stepped out: a woman in a gray wool tailored suit carrying a thick manila folder, and an older man with the sour, pinched face of a municipal bureaucrat who had spent thirty years looking for technical violations in orphanages.
Miss Agatha Vance—no relation to the doctor, though she carried herself with the same cold, clinical certainty—sat on the edge of the settee in Arthur’s library, her galoshes leaving two damp, oval stains on the Persian rug.
“Mr. Whitmore,” Miss Vance said, her voice thin and nasal, like a dry reed scraped against slate. “The Department of Children and Family Services has a statutory mandate under Chapter Thirty-One of the Ohio Revised Code. We cannot simply disregard an active petition because the children have been moved to a private residence in the heights.”
Arthur sat behind his massive desk. He had not offered them tea. He had not offered them chairs; they had sat down themselves when his silence became too heavy to endure standing.
“An active petition,” Arthur repeated, his tone so flat it sounded like an echo from a well.
“Filed by the district agent, Mr. Croft, prior to his termination,” the older man, whose card identified him as Supervisor Hallowell, chimed in. He tapped a yellow pencil against his legal pad. “The complaint alleges gross physical neglect, imminent homelessness, failure of guardianship due to incapacitating illness of the primary custodian, and abandonment of education. Miss Foster is nineteen years of age. She is an unmarried minor under the common law of guardianship in this jurisdiction until her twenty-first year.”
Arthur did not look at Hallowell. He looked at Miss Vance’s galoshes, then at the damp stains on his rug.
“You have three minutes to conclude your remarks, Miss Vance,” Arthur said. “At three-fifteen, my driver brings the car around to take Caleb to his geometry tutor. I do not like my schedule disrupted by county clerks.”
Miss Vance’s face tightened, a sharp, red flush rising from her lace collar into her jowls.
“This is not a clerical matter, Mr. Whitmore!” she said, her voice rising half an octave. “We have an obligation to these children! Grace Foster was found unconscious in an unheated room. The boy was working illegally on the scrap docks. The little girl was running the streets without adequate footwear! We have two certified foster placements available in Ashtabula County—respectable Christian homes with farm acreage—where these children can be properly supervised while the sister completes her convalescence in a state sanatorium.”
The door of the library swung open.
Grace stood in the threshold.
She wasn't wearing an invalid’s shawl anymore. She wore a tailored navy-blue wool skirt and jacket that Arthur had commissioned from his own tailor on Euclid Avenue. Her hair was pulled back into a neat, professional knot, and pinned to her left lapel was the silver Swiss watch with Eleanor’s initials.
Behind her stood Caleb, his chin up, his hands out of his pockets, his eyes fixed on Hallowell like a young hawk watching a field mouse.
“There will be no sanatorium, Miss Vance,” Grace said. Her voice did not shake. It had the deep, ringing clarity of a bell struck in cold air. “And my brother and sister will not be shipped to Ashtabula County to work on dairy farms for five dollars a week from the county relief fund.”
Hallowell blinked, taken aback by the poise of the girl he had expected to find coughing in a charity ward.
“Miss Foster,” he said, clearing his throat with an important, raspy sound. “Your sentiment does you credit, but the law does not recognize sentiment. You have no legal standing as an adult guardian without an independent income, permanent domicile, and proof of financial security. You are currently an unemployed domestic laborer dependent on the hospitality of a third party.”
“She is not dependent on my hospitality,” Arthur said.
He stood up.
He did not use his cane. He placed both hands flat on the desk, leaned forward, and seemed to expand until his shadow covered half the bookshelves behind him.
“Miss Foster is the Executive Director of the Eleanor Whitmore Educational Foundation,” Arthur stated, each word dropping like a lead weight onto the desk blotter. “She receives an annual salary of four thousand two hundred dollars, paid quarterly from the foundation’s endowment at the Society for Savings. Her contract was signed yesterday morning, witnessed by the Chief Justice of the Eighth District Court of Appeals.”
Hallowell’s yellow pencil stopped tapping.
Miss Vance’s mouth opened slightly. “Four... four thousand?”
“Furthermore,” Arthur continued, his voice dropping into that terrifying, quiet register that made even the fire in the grate seem to burn lower, “the residence at thirty-four Elmwood Terrace is no longer a tenement. The property was transferred on Friday to a private family trust. The sole beneficiaries of that trust are Caleb and Annie Foster, with Grace Foster serving as managing trustee until Caleb reaches his majority.”
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a thick, cream-colored document with a heavy blue ribbon and a gold wax seal, and tossed it across the desk. It landed directly in front of Miss Vance’s galoshes.
“That is an order of full legal guardianship,” Arthur said, “signed by Probate Judge Harrison at two o’clock this afternoon. It names Grace Foster as guardian of the persons and the estates of Caleb and Annie Foster. It also names myself as court-appointed special master and family trustee.”
He leaned closer, his eyes cold as Lake Erie ice.
“Do you know Judge Harrison, Miss Vance?”
Miss Vance swallowed hard. Harrison was the administrative judge who approved the county welfare department’s annual operating budget.
“Yes, Mr. Whitmore,” she whispered.
“He is an old friend of mine,” Arthur said. “We shot canvasbacks together on the Sandusky marshes for thirty years. He was particularly interested to hear about Mr. Croft’s relationship with your department’s intake supervisors. In fact, there is a grand jury convening on the fourth floor of the courthouse on Friday morning to investigate the systematic trafficking of tenement children into unlicensed farm labor in Ashtabula County.”
Hallowell went completely white. He dropped his yellow pencil onto the floor; it rolled across the Persian rug and bumped against Arthur’s desk.
“Mr. Whitmore... we... we were merely following standard intake procedures based on the referral,” Hallowell stammered, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his upper lip. “There was no intention to cause distress... the file was marked urgent by the municipal court...”
“Your file is marked closed, Mr. Hallowell,” Arthur said.
He pointed his long, knobby finger toward the library door.
“Thomas is waiting in the hall to show you the way to your automobile. If I find either of you on the grounds of this estate—or within five hundred yards of the school Caleb and Annie will be attending on South Park Boulevard in January—I will not call your department head. I will call the sheriff, and I will have you lodged in the county jail on a charge of criminal trespass and harassment of a judicial ward.”
Miss Vance stood up so quickly her handbag dropped onto the settee. She grabbed it, didn't bother to pick up her pencil, and backed out of the room, her eyes fixed on Arthur as if he were a mountain that might slide down and crush her at any moment.
Hallowell followed her, stumbling over his own galoshes in his haste to reach the vestibule.
The heavy front door of the mansion slammed shut down the hall: *BOOM.*
Silence returned to the library.
Grace stood in the doorway, her hand resting on Caleb’s shoulder. Her face was pale, but her chin was held high, her eyes bright with a fierce, quiet triumph.
“Four thousand two hundred dollars?” she whispered, looking at Arthur. “Mr. Whitmore... that is more than the chief engineer at the rail yards makes.”
Arthur walked around his desk, picked up his mahogany cane from its brass hook, and walked over to where they stood.
He looked at Grace, then down at Caleb, and finally through the French doors toward the snow-covered terrace where Eleanor’s roses were sleeping beneath their thick mulch of cedar shavings.
“It is what my wife’s foundation requires to ensure that its director does not have to scrub floors between her anatomy lectures,” Arthur said gruffly. “And Caleb’s tuition at the University School is eight hundred a year. If you don't earn enough to pay for his Latin textbooks, he’ll grow up to be an ignorant rail-broker like me, and one of those in this family is quite enough.”
He reached out, his thumb catching a single stray hair that had fallen across Grace’s forehead, and tucked it gently behind her ear.
“You did well, Grace,” the old man whispered, his voice softer than I had ever heard it. “Your father would have been proud of the way you stood in that doorway.”
Grace didn't answer with words. She stepped forward, wrapped her arms around Arthur’s massive, woolen chest, and pressed her cheek against his lapel.
The old man froze for half a second, his shoulders tense, his hands hovering in the air as if he had forgotten what to do with a daughter’s embrace.
May you like
Then, slowly, heavily, his arms came down around her shoulders, his scarred, arthritic fingers closing over the navy wool of her jacket, holding her against his heart while the snow continued to fall outside the tall windows, soft and silent over the dark earth.
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