Chapter 24 - The Salt in the Well
I didn't sign it. Not then.
I shoved the papers into my tote bag, walked past Thomas Vance without another word, and marched up the shell path toward the main road.
"The bank processes the wire at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, Clara!" he called out behind me, his voice carrying clearly over the rustling grass. "Once the wire settles, you'll need three years and twenty thousand dollars in legal fees to prove you didn't sign that promissory note! Don't let your ridiculous pride ruin your revenge!"
I didn't turn around.
I walked until my lungs burned from the salt mist, past the abandoned cannery, past the weather-beaten Baptist church with its crooked steeple, all the way to Julian’s workshop at the boat landing.
The workshop smelled of pine sawdust, boiled linseed oil, and old iron. Julian was leaning over the bench, scraping the hull of an eighteen-foot cedar skiff with a heavy drawknife. When he heard my boots on the gravel threshold, he stopped, wiping his brow with the back of his forearm.
"You look like you've seen a ghost with a knife," he said quietly, setting the drawknife down.
"I did," I replied, leaning against the doorframe to catch my breath. "Julian... who owns the land under the cottage?"
Julian’s face didn't change, but his eyes narrowed slightly. He picked up an oily rag and slowly wiped the sweat from his palms.
"Old man Vance," he said plainly. "Not your daddy. His brother. The one folks said skipped out to Portugal with his mother's money back when I was still running crab traps."
"You knew," I whispered.
"I knew his lawyer in Richmond," Julian said, his voice deep and steady. "Lawyer called me three weeks back. Said a girl named Clara was moving into the point cottage. Said she was family, but not the kind that came with fancy lawyers and country club stickers on their cars. Told me to make sure the roof didn't leak, that the well ran sweet, and to keep an eye on the path."
He walked over to the wood stove in the corner, poured a cup of black coffee into a chipped ceramic mug, and handed it to me.
"Thomas Vance isn't your savior, Clara," Julian said, looking directly into my eyes. "He's a shark that swam in from deep water because he smelled blood on your mother's apron. If you climb into the boat with him, he won't row you to shore. He'll throw you out as bait."
"She forged my name, Julian," I said, the mug trembling in my hands, sending small dark ripples across the surface of the coffee. "Sixty thousand dollars. She’s going to use the bank to put a leash around my neck again. If I don't sign Thomas's petition, I'm liable for her debt."
Julian leaned back against his workbench, crossing his thick, tattooed arms.
"There's three ways to kill a snake," he said slowly. "You can let another snake bite it, but then you've still got a snake in your kitchen. You can burn the house down to smoke it out, but then you've got no roof over your head. Or you can take a flat shovel and cut its head off right at the root."
"How do I cut the head off a bank in Richmond from a marsh in North Carolina?"
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Julian reached into the drawer beneath his bench and pulled out an old black telephone directory and a small, worn leather notebook.
"You don't fight Eleanor's lawyer with Thomas's lawyer," he said, turning the pages until he found a dog-eared corner. "You call the state attorney general's fraud division in Norfolk. The assistant prosecutor there is Martha's second cousin. And he hates bank fraud almost as much as he hates the Vance family."
