The sun rose over Pine Ridge not with gold, but with a quiet, pearlescent grey that filtered through the pines.
Daniel woke up sitting in the worn plaid recliner in his parents’ living room. A wool blanket was tucked around his legs. In the kitchen, the familiar, comforting clatter of a cast-iron skillet against a gas burner drifted through the small hallway, accompanied by the rich, earthy aroma of dark roast coffee and frying bacon.
For a terrifying second, Daniel thought the previous twenty-four hours had been a nightmare.
Then he looked down at his clothes. He was still wearing his tuxedo trousers, torn and stained with dried Hudson mud at the hems. His dress shirt hung open, wrinkled and missing three buttons.
He stood up, his joints aching as if he had been beaten with clubs.
He walked into the kitchen.
Eleanor was standing at the stove. Her feet were wrapped in thick white gauze, her small toes peeking out, painted with yellow antiseptic ointment. She was wearing an old flannel nightgown and a faded cardigan that Daniel remembered from his middle-school days. Her silver hair was brushed smooth, tied back with a simple black ribbon.
She turned around as he entered.
Her face was pale, with deep violet shadows under her eyes, but the feverish, terrified look from the ballroom was gone. In its place was something indestructible.
“Morning, Danny,” she said softly, offering a faint, trembling smile. “Sit down. The eggs are almost ready.”
Daniel stopped in the doorway. His throat locked up completely.
“Mom… sit down,” he choked out, rushing forward to take the spatula from her hand. “What are you doing? Your feet are torn to pieces! You shouldn’t be standing!”
“If I don’t cook breakfast on a Sunday morning, Danny, then they won,” Eleanor said firmly, though her hands shook slightly as she let him guide her into one of the wooden kitchen chairs. “I’ve cooked breakfast in this house every Sunday since 1991. Some fancy girl in a white dress isn’t going to take that away from me.”
Daniel dropped to his knees beside her chair, burying his face in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, the dam finally breaking completely. The proud, successful architect who had tried so hard to prove he belonged among Manhattan’s elite vanished. He was just a boy, weeping against the apron of the woman who had bled for him. “I’m so sorry, Mom. I was so blind. I let her talk to you like that. I let her keep you away from me. I should have known. I should have known you would never abandon me.”
Eleanor’s hand, rough from decades of soap and garden soil, rested gently on the back of his neck. Her fingers stroked his hair with the rhythmic, hypnotic tenderness that had cured every fever of his childhood.
“Hush now, Danny,” she whispered, her own tears falling into his dark hair. “Hush. You were looking for a future. A mother doesn’t blame her boy for wanting to build a castle. You just didn’t realize she was building it on quicksand.”
Arthur walked through the back door, carrying an armload of split birch firewood. He set it down in the iron woodbox by the hearth, dusted his hands on his canvas pants, and looked at his son.
“The sheriff just called,” Arthur said, pulling out a chair at the table.
Daniel lifted his head, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “The sheriff?”
“State police, actually,” Arthur corrected, pouring himself a mug of black coffee. “Turns out Richard Sterling’s private security team wasn’t entirely private. One of the men he hired to watch the cabin at Blackwood Lake was an off-duty county constable who got nervous when he realized Eleanor had escaped. He walked into the barracks in Kingston at dawn and turned state’s evidence.”
Daniel’s breath caught. “What does that mean?”
“It means unlawful imprisonment,” Arthur said grimly. “Conspiracy to commit grand larceny. And mail fraud. The feds raided Sterling Capital’s offices on Wall Street forty minutes ago. Richard was arrested in the lobby of his apartment building trying to board a town car for JFK.”
“And Claire?” Daniel asked, his heart thumping unsteadily.
Arthur looked at his son with unblinking, honest eyes.