Chapter 10 - The Last Page of the Ledger
The private chapel of the Vale estate was located on the second floor, a small, high room paneled in old cedar that smelled of incense and sea salt. The marble Madonna stood in her niche, her hands open over a small silver bowl filled with fresh water from the northern rivers.
There were no senators there, and there were no compliance officers from Boston.
There was only my father, Arthur Grace, standing by the altar in his best flannel shirt, and Mrs. Gable, who was holding a small bundle of white linen she had spent three weeks embroirdering with the pattern of a tiny flower charm.
The baby had been born on a Friday morning, during the first true freeze of the spring. He was large, with the dark hair of the Vale family and the steady, quiet gray eyes that I had seen in my mother’s old photographs.
"His name is Arthur," I said to the priest, my voice echoing through the quiet cedar room. "Arthur Vale Grace."
Cassius stood beside me, his long black coat gone, replaced by a simple gray jacket that showed the scars on his arms where the old rail spikes had caught him during his youth on the docks. He didn't look at the ledger on the altar, and he didn't look at the security monitors that were glowing in the corridor outside; he looked down at his son’s face with an intensity that felt like a prayer.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver chain—not the cheap one Bianca had snapped in the mud, but a new one, worked in platinum and white gold by the jewelers on Wacker Drive in Chicago. The tiny flower charm was still there, but it was set with a single, small diamond that caught the light of the altar candles like a star.
He fastened it around the baby’s tiny wrist, his rough fingers surprisingly light against the soft, pink skin.
"No matter how low life makes you kneel, Arthur," Cassius whispered into the white linen, his voice dropping into that quiet, dangerous register that was now entirely filled with warmth. "Remember who you are. You are the stone underneath."
May you like
I looked out the high chapel window, where the Atlantic was churning white against the granite cliffs of the shore. The tide was coming in, heavy, loud, and indifferent to the names of the men who owned the piers, but the house was steady. The gates were locked against the wind, the fire was hot in the great hall below, and the ledger was finally clean.
We had brought our own name to the table. And the table was exactly the right size.
