Chapter 19 - The Ledger’s Last Secret
By late afternoon, the mountain was cleared of the filth that had dared to touch it.
Julian Vance had been intercepted near Circleville, his luxury sedan forced off the road by four Ohio State Highway Patrol cruisers. Stripped of his judicial protection, facing thirty-two federal indictments for money laundering, judicial bribery, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, Vance would spend the rest of his silver-haired days in a supermax facility.
Richard had been hauled away in the back of an ambulance, strapped to a gurney under heavy armed federal guard, awaiting revocation of his medical furlough and an additional twenty-year sentence for armed escape and aggravated burglary.
When the last cruiser rolled down the switchback and Miller finished debriefing Dad on the front porch, the mountain finally breathed again.
I walked down into the root cellar.
The heavy steel door swung open without a squeak. Maya was sitting cross-legged on the cot, her colored pencils spread around her, humming that same sweet, off-key melody.
She looked up, her big hazel eyes bright and clear, completely untainted by the violence that had just played out forty feet above her head.
"Is the thunderstorm over, Mama?" she asked, holding up her drawing.
It was a picture of our stone house. Around it, she had drawn a circle of giant, smiling oak trees holding hands like an unbreakable wall. In the middle of the yard were three figures: a grandfather with a saw, a little girl with a whistle, and a mother with long dark hair, wearing a silver crown.
Tears pricked my eyes, warm and healing. I knelt down beside the cot, gathered my daughter into my arms, and buried my face in her soft, clean hair, breathing in the scent of lavender and childhood innocence.
"Yes, baby," I whispered, kissing her forehead. "The thunderstorm is completely over."
"Can we go pick black raspberries by the pond now?" she asked, wrapping her thin arms tight around my neck.
"We can pick all the berries in the forest," I smiled, lifting her up onto my hip. "Every single one."
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We walked up the concrete stairs into the blinding, brilliant light of the afternoon sun.
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