Chapter 34 - Skeletons in the Orchard
My fingers hovered over the cracked leather before I could bring myself to touch it.
The paper smelled of dried lavender and the faint, bitter tang of vinegar—the homemade cleaning solution my mother used to wipe down every surface in this house, over and over, as if she were trying to scrub an invisible stain from the wood.
Her handwriting was unmistakable: small, disciplined, with the high loops on the *l*s and *t*s that she had taught me to form when I sat at her elbow during afternoon homework.
The entry was dated *November 14, 2009*:
*Arthur thinks I don't smell it. He thinks because he changed the air filters in the basement furnace and planted three rows of white pine along the fence line, the earth has forgotten what he poured into her.*
*The well water from the artesian tap came back from the state lab today. The clerk was an old student of mine from the middle school. He called me from his personal cell phone so there would be no official record.*
*Trichloroethylene: 420 parts per billion. The legal limit is five.*
*He asked me if we were living near an industrial dump. I told him we were living on an apple farm.*
*My joints have started swelling in the mornings. Yesterday, I couldn't open the jar of peach preserves Arthur brought up from the cellar. He was so gentle with me. He took the jar, opened it, and kissed my temple. He looked at me with so much sorrow that I almost pitied him. Almost.*
*He traded my life for this house. He traded our girls’ blood for fifty acres of poisoned trees. And now Eleanor wants a wedding in the orchard next spring. She wants white tents over the south drainage ditch. She wants the world to see how perfect we are.*
*I will not let her drink that water. Even if she hates me for it. Even if she spends the rest of her days believing I am cold, I will keep her out of this soil.*
Tears fell hot and silent onto the aged parchment, blurring my mother’s ink.
I looked up. Eleanor was slumped against the kitchen counter, sliding down until she was sitting on the floor, her designer coat bunched around her knees. Her hands were buried in her hair, her manicured nails digging into her scalp.
"She knew," Eleanor wept, rocking back and forth. "She wouldn't let me have the garden reception when Greg and I had our commitment ceremony. She made us rent the hall downtown. I thought... I thought she hated Greg. I thought she was just trying to ruin my day like she always did..."
"She was keeping you alive, Eleanor," Ben said, his tone devoid of cruelty, but weighted with absolute finality. "She took the hit. She let you believe she was difficult so you wouldn't drink the water from the well."
"And Marcus?" I asked, looking Arthur dead in the eye. "What did you do to Marcus?"
Arthur’s shoulders seemed to cave inward. "Marcus found the drainage pipe in the spring of 2010. He was clearing out the culvert by the county road after the snowmelt. He saw the black sludge seeping into the creek where his uncle’s cattle drank. He came to the house with a sample in a mason jar."
"And you blamed him," I said, the horrifying pieces locking together in my mind. "You told the town that Marcus had been dumping used motor oil and degreaser from his repair shop into our irrigation ditches."
"I didn't have a choice!" Arthur cried, slamming both palms down onto the table with sudden, desperate violence. "If Marcus went to the sheriff, they would have tested the foundation! Clara was already sick! She had the leukemia—the doctors said it was aggressive, that we needed three hundred thousand dollars for the specialized marrow transplant in Boston! Where was I going to get that money if the farm was condemned and I was in federal prison?!"
"So you framed a twenty-year-old boy," Ben said, stepping toward Arthur, towering over him with quiet fury. "You ruined his family’s name, drove his uncle out of business, and forced him to leave this county under threat of prosecution. All to protect your lie."
"Marcus took twenty-five thousand dollars to leave!" Arthur roared, his face mottled red. "I paid him! I gave him every cent of cash I had hidden in the barn safe!"
"He didn't take it to protect you, Arthur," Harlan Vance interrupted, his voice cutting through the shouting like a sharpened scalpel. "Marcus took that money and gave it directly to your wife’s medical fund. Every single penny. He deposited it into Clara’s account at First National under an anonymous donor tag. He didn't run away because he was guilty. He left because your wife begged him to go before you did something worse to him."
Arthur went dead still. His mouth hung slightly open, the breath whistling in his throat.
"Clara... did what?" Arthur whispered.
"She knew what you were capable of when you were cornered," Vance said. "She protected Marcus from you. And now, Arthur, Marcus is sitting in the United States Attorney's office in Philadelphia. He’s been there since eight o'clock this morning."
The front door swung open with a bang.
A state trooper, accompanied by two agents wearing windbreakers with federal seals, stepped into the hallway.
"Arthur Miller?" the lead agent said, holding a blue folder. "We have a federal warrant for your arrest under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, along with state warrants for wire fraud, evidence tampering, and reckless endangerment."
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Eleanor didn't move from the floor. She just stared at our father’s wrists as the cold steel handcuffs clicked around them, the metal shining bright in the hard November sun.
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