Chapter 10 - Dawn over Harrow Point
The sun came up over Harrow Point on Saturday morning without a cloud in the sky.
It was that bright, hard, scouring sunlight that follows an equinoctial storm, when the air is so clear you can see the red brick towers of the hospital six miles away in the city, and the frost on the boxwood hedges looks like pounded salt.
The front gates stood open. Not broken. Open.
A milk wagon from the green spring dairy was sitting in the circular drive, the horse wearing a straw hat with two holes cut for its ears, while Teddy leaned against the fender of the Yukon, eating an apple and talking to the driver about the football scores from Philadelphia.
In the great dining room, the sheets had been taken off the mahogany table.
The sun came through the eastern windows in great, slanting beams of gold that illuminated ninety years of Castellano dust—not the gray, sour dirt of neglect, but the fine, sweet dust of old wood, beeswax, and dried lavender.
Hannah sat at the head of the table.
She wore a gown of dark green wool—the color of the pine woods on the north shore—with a high collar of white lace that hid the thumb marks on her throat. Her hair was up, pinned with two bone combs that had belonged to Victor’s mother, and her left hand rested flat on the polished mahogany.
On her third finger was a band of heavy, unadorned gold that had no diamonds, no rubies, and no history south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Beside her, Poppy sat on two thick volumes of the *Encyclopedia Britannica*, using a silver spoon to eat hot cornmeal mush with brown sugar and heavy cream from the dairy wagon. The gray rabbit sat beside her bowl, its red-thread ear propped against the salt cellar so it could watch the horse through the window.
Victor came into the room from the garden terrace.
He did not have his coat on. He wore a heavy wool sweater the color of oatmeal, his sleeves pushed up to show the gray hair on his forearms and the old white tracks where the glass had cut him during the dock strike of ninety-nine.
His hip still clicked when he put his weight on his left heel—a dry, wooden snap that made Poppy look up from her mush and smile with her milk-white teeth.
“The horse has a hat,” Poppy said, pointing her spoon toward the window.
“The horse is seventy years old,” Victor said, sitting down at the place to Hannah’s right. “He needs a hat to keep the flies from biting his ears.”
He reached across the table—not for the coffee, which was steaming in a silver pot between them, but for Hannah’s hand.
She did not draw it back. Her fingers, still marked with the faint yellow shadows of the baling twine, closed around his thumb. Her grip was firm, rough, and had the warm, dry strength of a woman who had worked for everything she had ever held.
“The Greek’s people were at the custom house at seven,” she said.
Victor took a sip of the black coffee. “They were late. The office opens at six.”
“They had the papers for the dry-dock,” she said. “Marcus called on the private line while you were at the stables. He said the Moretti boy signed the release for the riparian rights without asking for the five hundred dollars.”
“He didn't need the five hundred,” Victor said. “His sister bought him a bus ticket to Tampa. He’s going to work in an orange grove where the ground don't freeze.”
He set the cup down. The silver florin—the one that had spent three days in the sulfur mud and twelve hours in the pocket of Hannah’s plum-colored dress—lay between the salt cellar and the toast rack, its rim catching the morning light until the Queen’s face looked as if it were made of white fire.
Poppy reached out a small, sticky finger and touched the silver edge.
“It’s warm,” the child said.
“It’s silver,” Victor told her. “Silver stays warm if you keep it near the fire.”
Hannah looked at him over the child’s head. The split beneath her eye had healed to a thin, pale pink line that looked like a needle mark, but her eyes were the dark, deep gray of the harbor when the wind dies at sunset.
“You’re going to let them keep the back gate open?” she asked.
Victor Castellano turned his head slowly and looked out through the high, arched windows at the road that ran down through the lime trees toward the city.
May you like
The iron was wide. The gravel was clean, swept of the black cinder and the broken glass from the flatbed. Two women from the village were walking up the path with baskets of fresh bread for the scullery, their aprons white against the green turf of the lawn, their voices drifting through the glass with the light, sweet clarity of bells over water.
“Yes,” Victor said. He brought Hannah’s knuckles to his lips, his scarred mouth resting against the gold band for three long, steady heartbeats. “The gate stays open, Hannah. This house is done with locks.”
