Chapter 49 - The Return to Oakton
The highway north was gray and empty.
Julian drove the old pickup truck he had borrowed from a neighboring oyster farmer. I sat in the passenger seat, wearing dry clothes Julian had fetched from the cottage—heavy work boots, a faded flannel shirt, and my canvas chore jacket. Between my feet sat the briefcase. In my lap, wrapped in a dry cloth, was the .38 revolver and the iron key.
Eleanor and Hannah were not with us.
We had left them at the county clinic in Stonington under the watchful eye of a deputy sheriff Julian knew from his years on the sound. They weren't under arrest—not yet. But they were contained, wrapped in scratchy hospital blankets, drinking bad coffee from styrofoam cups, stripped of their money, their secrets, and their power.
As the truck crossed the town line into Oakton, a strange, suffocating pressure settled over my chest.
I hadn't been back to this town in seven months.
Seven months since the rainy Tuesday night when I had spent three hours preparing a birthday dinner for myself—a small roast chicken, roasted potatoes, a modest lemon tart—only for my mother to burst through the door sobbing because Hannah’s third credit card had been declined at a boutique in New York. Seven months since my father had looked at my birthday cake, sighed, and asked if I could transfer eight hundred dollars to Hannah’s checking account before the bank closed.
Seven months since I had washed the dinner dishes, wiped down the counter, laid my house key on the pillow of my childhood bed, and walked into the night without a word.
Oakton hadn't changed. It was still a town of crumbling Victorian facades, decaying textile wealth, and manicured lawns that hid generational bankruptcy.
We turned down Blackwood Lane.
The Vance house sat at the end of the cul-de-sac, half-hidden behind overgrown hemlocks and dying rhododendrons. It was an enormous, three-story Queen Anne monstrosity with flaking gray paint, sagging porch gutters, and dark, shuttered windows that looked like blind eyes staring out at the gravel driveway.
In the driveway sat an unfamiliar black sedan with out-of-state plates. Its driver’s side door was hanging open.
"Julian," I said softly, resting my hand on the revolver.
"I see it," he said, slowing the truck to a crawl and pulling onto the grass verge fifty yards from the gate. "The engine is cold. It’s been sitting there for a few hours."
We got out of the truck. The air here didn't smell of salt or open water; it smelled of damp pine needles, rotting leaves, and the sharp, chemical reek of gasoline.
We walked up the gravel drive in silence, keeping to the shadow of the overgrown hedge. The front door of the main house was closed, but the heavy padlock on the carriage house fifty feet to the rear had been severed with industrial bolt cutters, lying discarded in the weeds like a dead beetle.
The double doors of the carriage house were ajar, revealing a pitch-black interior that smelled of old motor oil, dry sawdust, and kerosene.
"Wait here," Julian whispered, raising his rifle.
"No," I said, stepping past him into the gloom. "This started in this house, Julian. It ends here."
I pulled the heavy marine flashlight from my belt and clicked it on.
The beam of white light cut through the floating dust motes of the carriage house. The floor was concrete, stained with decades of grease, piled with discarded lawnmowers, broken patio furniture, and stacks of old newspapers yellowed with age.
In the center of the floor, a ten-foot section of old plywood had been dragged aside.
Beneath the plywood was a square hole in the foundation—an iron hatch, three feet across, surrounded by a border of massive granite blocks set into the earth.
The hatch was made of thick, riveted iron plate, painted black, its surface untouched by rust despite forty years underground. In the center of the plate was a heavy, circular mortise lock, surrounded by an engraving of an anchor entwined by a crowned viper.
The Vance family crest.
May you like
And lying sprawled across the edge of the iron hatch, his flannel shirt soaked in blood, his breathing coming in thin, whistling gasps, was my father.
***
