Chapter 10 - The Cleansing
The iron gates of the Beacon Hill estate were wide open when our car pulled up the cobblestone drive.
Standing on the front steps, holding two oversized rolling suitcases and an overnight bag, was Chloe—Julian’s fiancé. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her hair pulled back into an unkempt ponytail. When she saw our car, she didn't run; she walked down the stone stairs, her head bowed in profound shame.
Daniel stepped out of the vehicle, his expression guarded.
“Daniel... Maya,” Chloe choked out, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold. “I’m leaving. I packed whatever was mine. Julian is at the central police precinct trying to arrange bail for Arthur Vance, but I can’t... I can’t be a part of this anymore. I had no idea about the DNA test. I had no idea Sandra hit Ava until Julian told me in the car on Sunday night. If I had known, I swear to God I would have stopped it.”
I looked at Chloe. For three years, she had been a passive fixture at those awful Sunday dinners, constantly enduring Sandra’s subtle insults about her inability to conceive, jumping whenever Sandra demanded another glass of wine. She had been an accomplice through silence, but unlike Julian, she hadn't engineered the malice.
“Where will you go, Chloe?” I asked gently.
“Back home to Vermont,” Chloe whispered, wiping a tear from her cheek. “My parents have a place near Burlington. I called off the wedding an hour ago. I gave Julian the ring back on his desk. I thought I was marrying into a respectable family, Maya. I didn't know I was marrying into a syndicate of thieves.”
Daniel nodded slowly. “Take care of yourself, Chloe. If you need assistance relocating, let Clara know. But do not contact Julian again on family lines.”
“I won't,” she promised softly. “Give Ava a hug for me. Tell her... tell her I am so, so sorry.”
Chloe loaded her bags into a waiting taxi and drove away, leaving the grand Beacon Hill estate completely deserted.
Daniel pushed open the massive front doors.
The house smelled of stale perfume, old cedar, and the lingering, sickening memory of Sunday dinner. We walked through the grand foyer, past the marble busts and oil portraits of Prescott ancestors who had long turned to dust, and stepped into the formal dining room.
The room remained exactly as we had left it two nights ago.
The crystal chandelier hung silent above the twenty-foot mahogany table. Sandra’s bowl of cold, congealed lobster bisque still sat on the linen tablecloth, the crumpled ball of the fraudulent St. Jude DNA test still submerged in the center. Ava’s overturned dining chair remained lying on the hardwood floor, a silent, tragic monument to the violence that had taken place.
Daniel walked over to the chair. He reached down, took the mahogany frame in his hands, and slowly, deliberately set it upright.
He looked at the spot on the floor where our daughter had fallen, then looked across the table to the seat Sandra had occupied for forty years.
“My father bought this table in Paris in 1984,” Daniel said softly, his voice echoing in the vast, empty room. “He told me that a dining table is the altar of a home. It’s where families are supposed to break bread, heal wounds, and celebrate life. Sandra turned it into an executioner’s block.”
“Then we don't keep it, Daniel,” I said, stepping up beside him and resting my hand on his shoulder. “We don't keep the table. We don't keep the chairs. We don't keep this house.”
Daniel turned to me, surprised. “You want to sell Beacon Hill?”
“Arthur’s legacy isn't brick and mortar on Beacon Hill, Daniel,” I said, looking around the cold, opulent museum of a room. “Arthur’s legacy was his love for you, his trust in Ava, and his desire to help people. We have our townhouse in Brookline. We have our home. We don't need Sandra’s mausoleum.”
A brilliant, peaceful smile broke across Daniel’s face—the first real smile I had seen in days.
“You’re right,” Daniel said, pulling me into his arms and kissing me deeply on the lips. “We sell the house. We donate every single penny of the proceeds to the Boston Children’s Hospital Pediatric Trauma Wing. We build an entire floor dedicated to healing abused and neglected kids, and we put my father’s name on the front door.”
“And what about this table?” I asked, looking down at the mahogany wood.
Daniel picked up the bowl of congealed bisque containing the forged paternity test and carried it straight to the antique fireplace across the room. He tossed the crumpled paper into the cold grate, grabbed a box of long fireplace matches from the mantelpiece, and struck one.
The flame flared bright yellow in the dim room.
May you like
Daniel dropped the match onto the paper. The dry edges caught fire instantly, curling black and turning into ash, sending a thin wisp of gray smoke rising up the chimney into the Boston sky.
“Good riddance,” Daniel whispered.
