Chapter 6 - The Long Walk Out
Brooke didn't scream when the ring hit the counter.
She just stared at it. The platinum band sat there on the white quartz, small and heavy, catching the light from the pendant lamps. A drop of beef gravy had landed an inch to the left of it, dark and greasy against the polished stone.
"Ethan," she whispered. Her face had gone completely white now, the color of skim milk. "What are you doing? Don't be theatrical. This is business. This is my family's life."
"No," Ethan said. He pulled Walt’s coat tighter around his chest, his hands still deep in the pockets. "It’s your father’s business, Brooke. It’s never been my life. I spent three years pretending I liked room-temperature wine and eighty-dollar steaks that tasted like salt and wood smoke. I spent three years listening to your father tell the men at the club that I was 'a good boy from good stock who just needed the rough edges planed off.'"
He looked at Richard, who was still leaning against the counter, breathing through his teeth like an old dog with the heaves.
"My dad had rough edges, Richard," Ethan said, his voice shaking with something that was half-grief and half-liberation. "His hands were so rough from the planer that he couldn't put on a pair of nylon socks without snagging them. But when he sat down at a table, nobody left hungry. And he never once asked a man to sign away his grandfather’s work for eighty thousand dollars and a desk with a view of a parking deck."
Richard Caldwell didn't look up. He didn't have the strength left to sneer. His whole world—the firm, the Southpoint contracts, the four-hundred-thousand-dollar line of credit he’d drawn against the merger—had vanished into the steam from three covered dishes.
"Get out," Brooke said.
Her voice wasn't loud now. It was thin and brittle as dried grass. She was looking at me, not Ethan.
"Get your pots, Evelyn. Take your grease and your dead husband's papers and get out of my house."
"It’s not your house, Brooke," Ethan said, turning toward the foyer. "The construction loan is in my name. The bank called me yesterday about the third draw. You told them to release it without my signature, didn't you?"
Brooke’s eyes flared, but she didn't answer.
"We’ll talk about the deed on Monday," Ethan said. "With Julian’s lawyers."
I didn't say another word to Brooke. I didn't need to. I’ve lived sixty-one years in this county, and I’ve learned that when the Lord starts settling accounts, the best thing a Christian woman can do is keep her apron clean and stay out of the way of the falling timber.
I picked up the yellow ceramic dish. I picked up the pie tin.
Julian Cross stepped forward, his leather binder under his arm, and lifted the fifteen-pound Dutch oven off the quartz counter with two hands. He didn't look at Richard; he didn't look at Brooke. He walked toward the front door with the steady, unhurried pace of a man who had already seen the end of the movie.
When the heavy front door clicked shut behind us, the Cary air hit my lungs like cold spring water.
The sleet had stopped. Above the three-car garages and the spindly saplings, the clouds were tearing apart, revealing a North Carolina sky so clear and black the stars looked like chips of salt scattered across a dark floorboard.
Ethan walked down the bluestone steps ahead of me, his shoulders straight under Walt’s canvas coat. He reached the bottom of the walk, stopped by the mailbox, and stood there for a long moment, staring up at the roofline of the seventy-thousand-square-foot house he had helped build.
"Mom," he said as I caught up with him.
"Yes, son?"
"The roast was good."
A small laugh caught in the back of my throat, smelling of cold air and old thyme. "It was better at two o'clock, Ethan. The gravy was too thick by nine. I should have used more vinegar."
"It was the best thing I’ve tasted in three years," he whispered.
Julian Cross stood by the passenger side of my old Subaru, the heavy iron Dutch oven held against his chest like an infant. His driver—a quiet young man in a dark cap—was already standing by the Lincoln’s trunk, waiting.
"Evelyn," Julian said, nodding toward the back of my wagon. "Do you mind if we load this into your car? The cast iron is still warm enough to heat the cabin."
"Load it in, Julian," I said, clicking the remote to pop the hatch. "And you might as well follow us down to Orchard Ridge. If you’re going to give me four million dollars on Monday morning, you’re going to sit at my kitchen table and drink a cup of Walt’s chicory coffee before you leave town."
Julian’s face didn't break into a grin, but the gray corners of his eyes softened until he looked like the boy who used to haul flour sacks into the Oak & Iron back in seventy-nine.
"I’ve been waiting forty years for a cup of that coffee, Evelyn," he said.
May you like
We pulled away from the curb at ten-forty-eight. In the rearview mirror, Ethan’s house looked smaller now—just a box of white brick with too many lights left on in the middle of a frozen field, hollow and bright, while the road ahead of us curved back toward the old trees of Raleigh, dark and heavy and smelling of wood smoke.
***
