Chapter 18 - Paper and Fire
By nightfall, the lake house was surrounded by flashing blue and red emergency lights. Deputy Miller and three state troopers had cordoned off the workshop, cataloging the kerosene cans abandoned by Arthur’s hired arsonist—a known petty felon from Saginaw who had rolled on Miriam Cross within thirty minutes of his arrest at a nearby gas station.
Arthur Vance was escorted off the property in handcuffs, his broken arm splinted by paramedics, while Marilyn Freeman arrived in her heavy Buick, stepping carefully through the gravel in her rubber boots.
"The county prosecutor is issuing an immediate warrant for Miriam Cross for extortion, attempted arson, and falsification of evidence," Marilyn told me, wrapping a thick wool blanket around my shoulders as I sat on the porch steps. "Her lawyers in Detroit have already withdrawn their appearance in the chancery suit. The injunction is dead."
I held Donald’s calfskin journal against my chest. My hands were finally steady.
"Did you read what he wrote?" Marilyn asked gently, sitting beside me.
I opened the journal to the entry dated November 3, 1989—the day Donald had bought Miriam out:
*I paid Miriam her thirty pieces of silver today. She laughed and said I’d die a poor carpenter working twenty-hour shifts while the world belongs to the lawyers and the paper-pushers. Maybe so. But when I build a chair, a man can sit in it without worrying it’ll give way under his weight. When I build a legacy, I want it to stand long after my name is forgotten. Julian doesn't understand this. He has his mother’s hunger for things he didn't build. But if there ever comes a day when someone with an honest carpenter’s eye enters this family, let this book be her deed.*
"He knew," I whispered. "He knew years before I ever met Julian."
"Donald was a judge of character, Amanda," Marilyn said with a rare, soft smile. "He knew what Julian was. That’s why he didn't give the empire to his son. He held it in trust until someone arrived who could protect Ruby."
The rain had finally stopped. The lake lay dark and mirror-calm under the emergence of cold, sharp winter stars. The commercial titles were safe. Ruby’s trust was inviolable. The storm that had raged since the day Julian brought his mistress into my kitchen seemed, at long last, to have broken.
May you like
Or so we believed.
***
