Chapter 5 - The Ledger of Small Sins
The Highland County courthouse was built in 1888 of red brick that had turned the color of dried liver under a century of coal smoke and mountain rain. In the basement, where the Commonwealth’s Attorney had his summer annex, the pipes overhead sweated drops of cold water onto the green linoleum floor.
It was nine o'clock on Sunday night.
On the long table of scarred pine sat thirty years of my life, distilled into three piles of paper: my employment tax forms from 1994, my mother’s handwritten receipts for the carriage house maintenance, and the red-and-black ledger.
Across from me sat Marcus Vance, the family attorney. He had taken off his seersucker coat; his white shirt was yellowed at the armpits, and his gold-rimmed spectacles hung from a black cord around his neck. Beside him sat Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Buchanan, a sharp-faced man of forty with graying temples who had never received a campaign contribution from Eleanor Aldridge because he had grown up on a dairy farm on the other side of the ridge.
"Miss Vargas," Buchanan said, his thumb running down page forty-two of my notebook. "This entry for November third of last year. You write: *C. brought the blue papers from the bank. H. refused to hold the pen. C. twisted her thumb until the tendon cracked. Dr. T. gave an injection of five milligrams of Valium.* Can you swear to that under oath?"
"I don't need to swear to it," I said. "You can take Dr. Thorne’s office records from his clinic in the village. He billed Cole under the account for the prize heifers at the north farm. 'Veterinary supplies—calmative.' Fifty dollars cash every two weeks. Check the pharmacy ledger in town. Old man Miller at the Rexall doesn't throw away a duplicate slip."
Vance leaned forward, his hands trembling. "Rosa... you must understand the position here. Mrs. Aldridge is seventy-four years old. Her late husband was a giant of this Commonwealth. If this... if this sordid business goes to an open grand jury, the Aldridge Foundation will collapse. The hospital wing, the library in town, the scholarship fund—"
"The foundation," I said, looking Vance straight in his watery blue eyes, "was funded with Hannah’s grandfather’s timber land. The four thousand acres along the crest of the Blue Ridge. The land her father left her when he died in the plane crash in ninety-eight."
Buchanan looked up sharply from the notebook. "The Crestwood tract?"
"The Crestwood tract," I said. "Hannah was eighteen when her father died. Eleanor arranged the marriage with Grant two years later. Grant didn't know about the trust. Grant never cared about the land; he only cared about the engines and the oil rigs. But Eleanor knew. The trust said the land could only be sold if Hannah died without heirs, or if she signed a full release to the Aldridge corporation before her thirtieth birthday."
I pointed a finger at the notebook.
"Her thirtieth birthday is next Tuesday," I said.
Buchanan let out a slow whistle through his teeth. He turned the ledger toward Vance.
"Marcus," Buchanan said, his voice dropping into that quiet, deadly register that county lawyers use when they know the game is up. "Your name is on this notary acknowledgment from December twelfth. You stamped a deed transfer for the lower timber rights while Hannah Aldridge was legally declared deceased by the state of Virginia."
Vance’s face went the color of lard. "Robert... I was assured... Cole told me she was in a private facility in Maryland. He told me she had executed a power of attorney before the accident."
"You stamped it in Dad’s study," I said. "I brought you a glass of iced tea with lemon. You used the senator’s brass blotter to dry the ink. You didn't even look at her face because she had a pillowcase over her head to keep her from spitting at you."
Vance stood up so fast his chair fell backward, hitting the linoleum with a flat, wooden crack. He walked to the water cooler in the corner, his back to the room, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps.
"Where is Eleanor?" I asked Buchanan.
"She’s in the holding cell upstairs," Buchanan said. "She refused the telephone call. She demanded that the Governor be contacted directly. The Governor’s office called back twenty minutes ago; his chief of staff said he hasn't spoken to an Aldridge since the primary and has no intention of starting now."
The door of the basement office swung open.
Grant stood in the frame. He had not changed his clothes. His Sunday linen shirt was torn at the pocket, stained with Hannah’s tears and the red clay of the hospital parking lot where he had fallen to his knees while the doctors took her into the intensive care unit.
He looked at me.
For thirty years, I had mended his socks. I had made his ginger tea when he had the mumps. I had lied to his father when he took the tractor down to the river without permission.
"Rosa," he said.
I didn't move.
He walked across the room, past the Commonwealth’s Attorney, past the family lawyer who was still staring at the water cooler. He dropped to his knees on the linoleum in front of my chair.
He didn't speak. He took my hand—the old, rough hand that had scrubbed his mother’s kitchen floor—and he pressed his face into my palm.
"I didn't know, Rosa," he wept, his shoulders heaving against my knees. "I swear to God Almighty, I didn't know. They told me she was gone. They sent me the death certificate to Dubai. They sent me pictures of Lily by the grave in the churchyard. They told me she was driving too fast in the rain because she was unhappy with me."
"I know, Grant," I said softly, resting my other hand on his hair, which was still thick and dark like his father’s had been forty years ago. "I know they told you that."
"Why didn't you write to me?" he cried. "One letter, Rosa. Just one line."
"Eleanor opened the mail," I said. "Cole went through my room in the carriage house every Tuesday while I was in town at the market. If I had written a letter to Dubai, Grant, Hannah would have died of a heart attack that very night. And they would have buried her for real in the pine woods behind the orchard."
Grant’s head came up. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, the eyes of an Aldridge who had finally realized that the house he was born in was built on an open grave.
"Where is Cole?" he asked Buchanan.
"State police spotted his car near the North Carolina line," Buchanan said. "They’ll have him before morning. Grant, you need to go to the hospital. Your wife is asking for you."
"No," Grant said, his voice turning cold and flat, a mirror of his mother’s tone, but without the malice. "She isn't asking for me. She doesn't even know who I am. She looks at me and she sees the chain on the door."
He looked back at me.
May you like
"She’s asking for you, Rosa," he said. "She won't take the broth from the nurses. She says the tray has to come from you."
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