Chapter 7 - The Dinner on Rittenhouse
At 8:00 on Thursday evening, the dining room of the historic penthouse at 1820 Rittenhouse Square was illuminated by the golden, radiant glow of two dozen beeswax tapers reflected in the leaded-glass casement windows overlooking the park.
The four-thousand-square-foot residence had belonged to Julian Santoro until four o'clock that afternoon, when the federal marshals completed the formal padlocking of his private assets and surrendered the keys to the court-appointed trustee: Tessa Vance Moretti.
The modern minimalist art that Julian had imported from Berlin had been taken down from the walls, stacked in the service corridor awaiting public auction; in its place hung my father’s framed hand-drawn survey maps of the Delaware basin from nineteen ninety-four, their India-ink lines glowing warm and permanent under the picture lamps.
The mahogany dining table was set with three places of simple, elegant cream porcelain that Mrs. Donatelli had brought from the Chestnut Hill manor, flanked by heavy silver flatware that bore the simple, uncreased monogram of the Moretti foundation.
Sitting at the center of the table was my aunt, Clara Vance.
She was sixty-five years old, wearing a soft lavender cashmere cardigan that Matteo had ordered from a boutique on Walnut Street that morning, her silver hair brushed neat, her hands steady as she buttered a piece of warm sourdough bread from a bakery in South Philly.
Her four-thousand-dollar monthly nursing fees at Cherry Hill had been paid ten years in advance by a certified cashier’s check delivered to the director’s desk at two o'clock; she was no longer a ward of a bankrupt county fund. She was an honored matriarch sitting at the head of an unencumbered house.
"The soup has just enough thyme, Tessa," Aunt Clara smiled, her pale blue eyes shining with a peace that had been missing since my father went into the river. "Your mother always said that if you don't steep the herbs before the broth simmers, you're just making warm water for people with no tongues."
"Matteo made the broth, Aunt Clara," I laughed, looking across the table at my husband.
Matteo sat in his unbuttoned white shirt, his sleeves rolled to his forearms, cutting a slice of roasted prime rib with the surgical precision of an artillery officer, his amber eyes crinkling with quiet amusement as he looked at the two women sitting before him.
"Mrs. Donatelli taught me the broth when I was twelve, Aunt Clara," Matteo said smoothly, pouring two fingers of twenty-year-old Barolo into her crystal glass. "She told me that if a boy cannot balance a stockpot, he has no business trying to balance a trucking line."
The heavy oak pocket doors of the dining room slid open with a soft, oiled rumble.
Leo stepped into the room, holding an unsealed, red-bordered courier envelope bearing the gold-leaf seal of the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY.
He walked to the table, bowed his head with deep, generational deference to my aunt, and laid the envelope beside Matteo’s wine glass.
"From the federal holding facility in Newark, boss," Leo reported, his voice quiet and professional. "The preliminary plea agreement for Julian Santoro was rejected by the United States Attorney forty minutes ago. The trial has been scheduled for February fourteenth."
Matteo did not open the envelope.
He picked it up, turned it over in his scarred fingers, and handed it across the table to me.
"Your ledger, Tessa," Matteo murmured. "You decide whether he gets twenty years in a minimum-security camp in Allenwood... or forty years in the penitentiary at Lewisburg."
I looked at the envelope.
I felt the cool paper beneath my thumbs. I thought of the night on Locust Street, the four-dollar shoes held together with hardware tape, the forty-five dollars I had needed for rent, and the twelve years my father had spent lying in an unmarked grave behind the church in Gloucester City while Julian drank scotch in this very room.
I didn't open the envelope.
I reached out with my right hand, held the paper over the tall beeswax taper in the center of the table, and let the corner catch the yellow flame.
FZZZZT.
The paper caught instantly, a clean, bright orange fire that consumed the legal seals, the court numbers, and the name of Julian Santoro in three seconds of silent, fragrant smoke.
I dropped the burning vellum into the empty crystal ashtray on the sideboard, watching the white ash curl into black carbon before dying into nothing.
"The law has his body, Matteo," I said softly, looking back into my husband's eyes.
"And I have my father’s name."
A slow, magnificent, and unshakeable smile touched Matteo’s lips.
He picked up his wine glass, lifting it toward Aunt Clara, then toward me, his gold signet ring catching the firelight with an unassailable, permanent brilliance.
May you like
"To the surveyor, Tessa," Matteo whispered across the table.
"To the surveyor, husband," I replied, clinking my glass against his with a clean, ringing chime that echoed through the high ceilings of Rittenhouse Square like a bell rung in an open meadow.
