Chapter 9 - The Soil of the Graces
The spring came to New England not with sweetness, but with a sharp, violent green that broke through the gray ice of the marshes like a blade.
On the first Tuesday of April, less than a month before the baby was due, my father Arthur Grace arrived from McMinnville in his old Ford truck. He didn't look at the granite fortress of the Vale estate, and he didn't look at the container ships sitting in the channel; he went straight to the cemetery where Eleanor Whitfield was buried.
He spent four hours clearing the wild briars from the headstone, his rough, scarred hands covered in the dark New England dirt that my mother had loved.
"She looks like you, Mara," my father said, leaning against the granite marker as Cassius and I walked up the hill from the gate. He looked at Cassius with the sharp, grey eyes that Lily had inherited in Oregon—the eyes that didn't blink when they were looking at money. "You're the Vale boy?"
"I am Cassius," the Don said, removing his hat and holding it against his coat.
"My family used to buy your grandfather's cedar for the mills," Arthur Grace said, his jaw working as he looked at the long black car waiting by the road. "He was a hard man, but he never sent a short load. Are you sending short loads to my daughter?"
"I am sending the whole forest, Mr. Grace," Cassius said, and for the first time since I had known him, he reached out his hand to an older man without his leather gloves.
Arthur looked at the hand, then at the white scars on the Don's wrist, and finally at my stomach under my green wool dress. He took the hand, his grip rough and loud in the quiet cemetery. "She’s a Grace, boy. We don't leave our tools in the dirt. If you make her kneel again, I’ll bring the logging crew down from Maine and clear your maples before the noon bell."
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"The maples are her property now, sir," Cassius said. "The deed was registered with the probate court on Friday."
We walked down the hill together, the wind off the Atlantic carrying the scent of salt, wild mint, and the fresh, damp reality of a world that had finally found its coordinates. The Thorne estate was dark now, the white columns covered in gray plastic where the federal receivers were preparing the asset sale for the city pension fund, but the Vale gates were wide open.
