Chương 10 - Dawn at the Sea Wall
Six months later, the wind coming off the Long Island Sound smelled of salt, wet sand, and the wild rose bushes that were just beginning to bud along the granite sea wall.
Maria sat on the broad wooden porch of the house in Oyster Bay.
It wasn't a fortress like the Hudson Valley manor. It was a white clapboard house with green shutters, a wide lawn that sloped down to the water, and an ancient apple tree that was currently dropping white petals across the grass like late-spring snow.
In the middle of the lawn, Diego was running.
He was wearing a red t-shirt, jeans with grass stains on the knees, and sneakers with neon green laces that he had picked out himself. He had a kite—a blue dragon with a long, yellow tail—and he was sprinting toward the water, his arms raised, his chest expanding with deep, greedy lungfuls of sea air.
"Higher, monkey!" Maria shouted, leaning her elbows on the porch railing, her face warm in the morning sun. "Let the string out!"
"He’s not letting the string out," a voice said behind her. "He’s trying to drag it behind him like a dead fish."
Sebastian stepped out onto the porch, carrying a wooden tray with a pot of coffee, two mugs, and a plate of warm blueberry pancakes. He wore faded jeans and an old gray sweatshirt, his hair tousled by the salt breeze, looking ten years younger than the man who had stood in Suite B of the Grand View Hotel.
He set the tray on the wicker table, came up behind her, and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on the top of her head.
Maria leaned back against him, letting her eyes close for three seconds, simply feeling the heat of his body and the steady, unhurried beat of his heart against her shoulder blades.
"Dr. Chen called this morning," she said, turning her head slightly so her cheek brushed his jaw.
"And?"
"The graft is completely integrated," she said, her voice full of a quiet, shining wonder that hadn't faded in six months. "He doesn't need the anticoagulant anymore. He’s... he’s just a seven-year-old boy, Sebastian."
"He was always just a seven-year-old boy," Sebastian murmured, his hands tightening gently around her hips. "He just had an expensive heart."
"We got the foundation report yesterday," she said, looking down toward the beach where Diego had finally managed to catch a thermal, the blue dragon climbing into the pale sky above the Sound. "The Alvarez-Santos Trust has already funded forty-six pediatric surgeries in Queens and the Bronx. Dr. Chen is running the surgical board."
Sebastian smiled against her hair. "Your mother would have liked that."
"She would have liked you," Maria said, turning in his arms to face him. She reached up, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, the faint shadow of morning stubble rough against her palms. "Even if you did spend five hundred thousand dollars to buy a dinner with me."
"It was an investment," he said, his gray eyes dancing with a light that had completely replaced the cold stone of the past.
"A good one?"
May you like
"The return on capital," he whispered, leaning down until his lips were an inch from hers, "is currently infinite."
Down on the grass, the yellow tail of the dragon kite snapped in the wind, climbing higher and higher into the clean blue sky, far above the reach of auctions, ledgers, and the shadows of wolves that had finally, permanently been driven from the door.
