Chapter Forty
Cambridge, Massachusetts
At a corner market on the way to Mount Auburn cemetery, Jack Yates stopped to examine the buckets of flowers. He bent casually to pick out a bouquet of Alba Maxima roses, knowing everything that their white petals symbolized: innocence; remembrance; and new beginnings.
He paid for the bouquet and walked down the cracked sidewalk toward the cemetery.
The day was warm and mild with wisps of clouds, and he pushed through the rusted front gate, eyeing the vines of ivy that were creeping up along the stone walls.
He inhaled the scent of green grass and freshly tilled earth, and wound through the grave markers until he came to a stop by a large pond flanked with weeping willows and a majestic white granite colonnade.
He was on his way to his own memorial service.
New commemorative plaques and headstones for Jack and Leo were being dedicated near the gravesite where their father had once been laid to rest. Jack stayed at the far edges of the cemetery, keeping his distance from the crowd of black-clad mourners—a mix of friends and family, reporters, and a large congregation of curious onlookers.
As he passed by fifty yards away, they sang a hymn led by a priest dressed in a white alb.
He was letting them bury him.
He had waited anxiously for the papers to come out in the days after the Byrd scandal, scouring them for any mention of himself or his alias.
He had caught the first train out of San Luis Obispo, praying he could get as far east as possible before the news of his survival broke.
He sat in the express train’s first-class compartment, dressed in a sharp day suit, surrounded by damask.
The train had hurtled through the Sierra Nevada tunnels like a bullet passing through a chamber.
He had ordered a cup of coffee. And a second one. Full of sugar, just the way Leo would have liked it. He left it on the glass-topped table, as if Leo could walk through the door at any moment. Lift it to his lips and cheers.
Jack had closed his eyes, tilting his head back.
And then he waited for the explosion that never came.
In fact, the rival papers had never discovered his existence.
They had been too busy turning on Truman.
They ran photographs of the Yates boys as children.
The storyline became much more sympathetic, a tale of two brothers who had been wrongfully convicted only to commit a crime when they were trying to get back their freedom.
They had paid the price for it by drowning.
It was an angle that the rival papers were leaning in to—so many deaths that never would have happened if the brothers hadn’t been framed in the first place.
The story was lurid and fantastical, stirring up public resentment just before Truman’s trial.
And even more importantly, it meant that neither Cora—nor her father—had talked. They had protected him by deciding to keep his secret.
He shifted in the shadows of the cemetery.
Someone had mounted a bright wreath in the colors of red, white, and blue beside Leo’s plaque.
Their mother was there, standing at the graves.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she clutched a handkerchief below her nose.
He had sent her a letter days ago so that she would finally know for sure that he was still alive, but that Leo was gone.
And that he would never be Jack Yates again.
He waited to approach the gravesite until the crowd dissipated and only a few errant programs from the service lay strewn in the grass. Jack waited until he was completely alone before he came to stand in front of the headstone plaques, still clutching the bouquet of white roses.
JACK TURNER YATES.
LEONARD RORY YATES.
He closed his eyes. He remembered pulling himself from the purple-black Bay without Leo.
Aching, he had lain in the cold sand for a moment.
He hadn’t seen Leo go under, but he had swum back with the last of his strength to try to find him.
Then finally he had retched into the sand, turned, and let out a silent scream toward the heavens.
Free at least, but at the cost of his brother.
He bent to place the roses on Leo’s grave. And then he left one for himself. The boy he used to be.
A dragonfly sailed past and snagged his attention, its translucent wings like stained glass. It made a thwicking sound and landed on a large bouquet of black-eyed Susans someone had left on Leo’s grave.
He bent to look at the card.
It was signed from Ella Duluth.
Jack smiled, shaking his head. He palmed the card and left the cemetery, hailed a cab to Dorchester, and ate dinner at a dingy restaurant that he remembered.
He ordered lasagna and garlic bread dripping with butter that was as good as anything he’d had at Byrd Castle.
Then he paid the bill and walked by memory down the old familiar streets of his childhood.
He saw the place where he once had fallen from a tree.
Where Leo had kissed Suzy Donnelly and dreamed of being a violinist. Jack followed the split sidewalks of his neighborhood with dusk setting and climbed the creaking wooden stairs of his mother’s front porch, feeling the soft rot of the boards give beneath his feet.
He was starting to shake. It surprised him, how nervous he felt.
He had left all those years ago, so young—a completely different boy, just out for any other night with his brother. But he never came back.
His mother’s voice was muffled through the wooden door. He could smell the grease of her hash fry left over from dinner, as if he were just coming home from an hour at the park.
All along, he had thought Leo would be there, tall and lanky, standing next to him.
He knocked and heard the radio inside being turned down.
He pictured lying awake in Cell Block D on Pelican Island, staring at the cement ceiling with his elbow crooked under his head, still practically a kid himself.
Cora must have been sleeping just down the hill in the guardhouses, with the fog horns sounding and the boats slipping soundlessly past. He had dreamed of this moment a thousand times, the vision of it as smooth and worn as the banister beneath his palm.
A prayer he had planted while the locusts still swarmed and all he could see was a barren rock.
He hadn’t known yet what things came out of the dark and secret places. That flowers could take root on a desolate island, while rot spread through a gilded mansion above the sea.
The patter of his mother’s footsteps approached.
“Jack?” he heard her whisper tentatively on the other side of the door. As if she could sense him, had always sensed him, as he made his way back to her.
Jack’s heart climbed into his throat, and the moment stretched out, piercing him forever. It hurt more than he’d expected. It felt better than he’d ever imagined it would.
His heart swelled with love.
He steadied himself and looked up as the final lock turned.
Cora stood in front of the door to her small rented office with a newspaper tucked beneath her elbow.
She jiggled the lock. She still couldn’t believe it was hers. The office was barely larger than a closet. It still smelled like fresh paint. And the mail slot was overflowing.
Cora stepped inside and flicked on the lights. She had paid for the office and a telephone line using the cash that Mabel had handed her in the car. It was only half of what Mabel had promised her, but Cora didn’t expect to ever see the rest of it. And that was all right.
She had officially adopted Ella Duluth as her alias, and her profile had skyrocketed.
She’d given interviews to the reporters who wanted to know how she’d figured out the painting was there.
She gave them the same story she’d fed the police, and told them she was just getting started.
If they wanted more, they could publicize her name and burgeoning business career, but absolutely no photographs that showed her face—or she would never give them another scoop or interview again.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and drank it black, slipping off her shoes beneath her desk, and began to open her letters. They were in a pile half a palm thick. She couldn’t help herself—she quickly scanned the back of each one, looking for male handwriting. Either her father’s, or Jack’s.
Every day, Cora put on her makeup and did her hair, even when she was just planning to put a kettle on and sit and read a book at her rented apartment.
She told herself it wasn’t because her heart secretly leaped every time the telephone rang or there was a knock on the door.
Her father’s silence made it clear where he stood.
Her stomach clenched whenever she thought of him.
As for Jack—he had escaped one final time and hadn’t looked back. She had kept his identity as secret as her own. He would know how to find her if he wanted to, and she hadn’t heard from him.
She swallowed down her disappointment as she made her way through the stack of envelopes and then turned to her notepad.
She spent the next two hours making phone calls, taking down notes for a new job and jotting an address to speak with someone for a lead she was following. When it was time for lunch, she opened the final letter.
It was typed, and postmarked from Massachusetts.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Tucked inside was an article from the Boston Herald.
LONG-LOST REMbrANDT FROM INFAMOUS HEIST RETURNS TO THE BASTION IN HOMECOMING CEREMONY
The note was unsigned. But there was a date written in the margins, and four words faintly underlined on the newspaper.
Bastion. Yates. Rembrandt. Dolores.
Abruptly, she sat up in her chair.