Chapter 18 - The Saturday Picnic
We spent Saturday afternoon at the public gardens across from the Swan Boats, sitting on a woolen plaid blanket under the sprawling branches of a weeping willow whose leaves were just beginning to turn that vivid, translucent green of early summer. Sophie had insisted on bringing a wicker basket filled with ham sandwiches, apple slices, and a thermos of iced lemonade that Mrs. Higgins had spent all morning preparing in the big kitchen on Beacon Hill. The park was alive with families, children running across the manicured lawns, dogs barking at squirrels near the bronze duckling statues, and the faint, sweet sound of a street musician playing an accordion down by the lagoon. For the first time in my life, I didn't have a briefcase with me. My phone was turned off—not silenced, but completely powered down and tucked away in the bottom of the picnic basket where even Silas couldn't reach me if the London exchange suffered a minor panic over crude oil futures. Everett was stretched out on his back, his hands behind his head, watching the white clouds drift across the high blue dome of the Boston sky. Dean was trying—and failing miserably—to teach Sophie how to skip flat stones across the surface of the pond, the water splashing her yellow sundress and making her shriek with laughter that echoed off the stone bridges. “You know,” Everett said quietly without opening his eyes, “we haven’t taken a vacation since before you took over the firm.” “This isn’t a vacation,” I smiled, leaning back against the trunk of the willow tree and letting the soft grass brush against my ankles. “This is just Tuesday afternoon in a world where nobody is locking the doors from the outside.” He turned his head, propping his chin on his forearm, and looked at me with those steady, gray eyes that had seen me through the worst winters of my life. “Where do we go from here, Maddie? The trusts are cleared, the city grid is secured, the Cambridge office is closed. There are no more enemies left on State Street.” I reached out, picking up an apple slice from the basket and turning it over in my fingers, watching the sunlight catch the wet skin. “There’s always the rest of New England,” I said. “Providence is still running on archaic coal generators from the fifties. Hartford’s municipal bonds are a mess of bad zoning laws and neglected infrastructure. And Sophie needs a bigger yard for that dog Uncle Dean promised her.” Everett laughed—a rich, full sound that chased away the last lingering ghosts of the old academy’s stone corridors. “A dog,” he muttered, shaking his head. “If you let her get a German Shepherd like the one Silas grew up with, I’m moving my office to the guest cottage.” “You wouldn’t dare,” I said, tossing an apple slice at his chest. He caught it out of the air with a grin, sitting up to hand it back to me just as Sophie came running back across the grass, her cheeks flushed pink from the sun, her yellow dress stained with grass stains and lemonade. “Mom!” she shouted, throwing herself into my lap with a force that knocked the breath right out of my lungs, though I caught her tight and buried my face in her hair. “Uncle Dean says if we walk down to the harbor right now, we can watch the big oil tanker turn around in the basin!” I looked over at Dean, who was sauntering across the grass with his hands in his pockets, looking far too innocent for a man who had spent the week shorting municipal bonds. I looked back down at Sophie’s bright, fearless eyes—eyes that had never known the sound of a key turning in an iron lock from the outside. “Let’s go,” I said, standing up and brushing the grass from my trousers. “Let’s go show the harbor how we do it.”
