Chapter 35 - Bloodline and Black Soil
The arrest was quiet, almost mundane, the way the most catastrophic events often are.
There were no sirens. No flashing red lights bouncing against the wallpaper. Just the heavy clumping of boots on the porch, the click of the latch on the cruiser door, and the crunch of tires over the limestone gravel as my father was driven away from the land his family had owned for over a century.
In the kitchen, the silence was suffocating.
Harlan Vance methodically packed the manila manifests and Clara’s journal back into his leather satchel. He snapped the brass buckle shut with a sharp, definitive click.
"The county health inspector will be here within an hour," Vance said, looking between Eleanor and me. "They’re going to red-tag the entire property. The domestic well is being capped immediately. Neither of you can stay here tonight."
"This is my house," Eleanor said again, but the words were hollow, coming out of her like air escaping a punctured tire. She was still sitting on the floor, leaning back against the cabinetry, her face streaked with black mascara lines. "Everything I planned... the baby’s room... the gender reveal video we were supposed to film in the parlor tomorrow..."
Ben let out a short, incredulous breath. "Are you honestly still thinking about your video, Eleanor? Look around you. Your father just left in handcuffs. Your mother’s death was caused by the soil under this floor. And you're mourning a photo shoot?"
Eleanor looked up, her lips trembling, but the haughty defiance was gone. What remained was a raw, terrified vanity that had nothing left to feed upon.
"You don't understand, Ben," she whispered, her voice cracking. "If I’m not the Miller daughter with the perfect life, who am I? Emily was always the smart one. Emily had the scholarships, the career in the city, the real talent. Dad spent every single day telling me that my job was to be beautiful, to be happy, to give this family something to smile about so we didn't have to look at the cracks."
She turned her bloodshot eyes to me.
"He bought me that pony because I heard Mom screaming in the cellar one night," Eleanor confessed, her voice dropping into a dull monotone. "I was twelve. I came down the stairs in my socks, and I heard Mom screaming at him that he was a murderer. The next morning, Dad took me to the fairgrounds and bought me the palomino with the braided mane. He told me that mothers sometimes have bad dreams, and that good daughters don't repeat what they hear in the dark."
I felt a cold shiver trace the outline of my ribs.
All those years, I had hated Eleanor for being favored. I had resented the new dresses, the piano lessons, the constant indulgence of her every whim while I was expected to be self-sufficient, responsible, invisible.
She hadn't been favored. She had been bribed.
She had been the gilded distraction Arthur constructed to keep his own conscience from devouring him alive.
"Eleanor," I said, walking over and kneeling down beside her on the cold linoleum. "Where is Greg?"
"At the gym," she said, a small, pathetic sob escaping her chest. "He told me he didn't want to get involved in 'family drama.' He said if this mess hurts his standing at the commercial firm, we might need to... re-evaluate things before the baby comes."
A surge of anger, sharp and protective, flared in my chest. Greg was a social climber who had attached himself to Eleanor precisely because he thought the Miller orchard was an unencumbered goldmine ripe for suburban development.
"Get up," I told her, extending my hand.
She stared at my outstretched palm, her fingers hesitating, trembling. "Why are you helping me? I took your first dance away. I told the coordinator to cut your music. I tried to make your wedding about my pregnancy."
"Because you're an idiot, Eleanor," I said plainly. "A selfish, spoiled idiot who was raised by a criminal to be a decorative screen. But you're still my sister. And that baby didn't ask to be born into a poisoned orchard. Now get up."
Slowly, her fingers gripped mine. They were icy, clutching at my skin with the desperate strength of a drowning swimmer. I pulled her to her feet.
"Where will we go?" she asked, looking around the kitchen as if the walls might collapse inward at any moment.
"We’re going to Ben’s house," I said. "And then we’re going to find out what else Arthur buried before the state bulldozes this place into a containment pit."
"There’s one more thing," Ben said suddenly.
He was standing by the parlor threshold, his gaze fixed on the ceiling rafters where the old attic access panel hung slightly ajar.
"What is it, Ben?" I asked.
May you like
"Arthur’s ladder," Ben pointed. "It wasn't in the shed. It’s right behind the pantry door. And there’s fresh plaster dust on the baseboard beneath the hatch."
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