Chapter 3 - The Call to the Battery
The study on the Battery was always dark, even in the middle of a Southern May afternoon. Charles Carrington didn't care for the sun; he said the glare off the water made his old eyes water, and he preferred the quiet, green-tinged light that filtered through the heavy velvet drapes and the massive leaves of the live oaks outside his windows.
He sat behind a massive desk made of salvaged ship timber from a merchant vessel that had been sunk off Cape Hatteras in 1942. His hands, spotted with age and twisted by arthritis into the shape of old tree roots, were resting on a clean sheet of white blotting paper. He wasn't wearing his suit jacket; he was in a simple, faded blue chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the faint, blue ink of an old navy anchor tattoo that had blurred into his skin over sixty years ago.
“Tell me again,” he said. He didn't move. He didn't blink. His dark eyes, identical to Lily’s, were fixed on the silver pocket watch that lay open on the desk before him, its second hand ticking with a small, sharp click-click-click.
“Blair left her in the electronics aisle at 11:14,” I said, sitting in the leather armchair across from him. Lily was downstairs in the garden with Charles’s old housekeeper, Martha, picking wild strawberries from the patch near the brick wall. “She returned to the house at 11:45. When I asked where Lily was, she told my mother she had left her because she was 'dawdling.' My mother laughed, Grand-Charles. She said it was good for her. She said Lily was monopolizing your affection.”
The old man didn't explode into a rage. He didn't slam his hand down on the ship timber. Men who have seen ships break apart in ice don't waste energy on noise. He simply reached out with one long, gnarled finger and closed the lid of his pocket watch with a soft, final snap.
“Sylvia always was a fool,” Charles said. His voice didn't carry any anger; it carried the cold, clinical assessment of a salvage engineer looking at a hull that was too rotten to save. “She thinks because she married a lawyer with a good family name, she’s an aristocrat. She forgets that her father was a dock foreman who died owing three months' rent to the company store.”
He stood up, his old joints popping like small dry twigs inside his trousers. He was six-foot-three, his spine slightly curved by the weight of his years, but he still carried that long, imposing stride of a man who had spent his life walking the decks of moving vessels. He walked to the window, his large hands reaching out to pull the velvet drape aside by two inches, allowing a single, sharp shaft of yellow sunlight to cut across the dark wood of the floor.
Down in the garden, Lily’s white dress was visible between the green leaves of the hydrangeas. She was holding a small wicker basket, her little fingers carefully selecting the brightest red berries, her white Mary Jane shoes already showing small streaks of gray mud from the garden path.
“She’s a good girl, Maren,” Charles said, his back to me. “She doesn't look for the cameras. She doesn't look for the applause. She looks at the things that matter.”
“The police have already filed an abandonment log with the Department of Social Services, Grand-Charles,” I said, keeping my hands flat on the leather armrests of the chair. “Blair’s name is on the official report. There will be a welfare investigation of the family unit within forty-eight hours.”
“Let them investigate,” Charles whispered. He turned around, his face half-hidden by the shadows of the room, his white hair gleaming like old silver in the single shaft of sunlight. “Graham won't like it. He thinks a social services report is the sort of thing that happens to the people who work in the mills. He’ll try to call the regional director to have the files cleared.”
“He can't clear a federal safety alert log, Grand-Charles,” I said. “Officer Miller made sure of that. The file has already been synced with the regional registry.”
Charles walked back to his desk. He didn't sit down. He reached for the heavy, black landline phone that had been sitting on the corner of his desk since 1974—the phone that connected directly to the central switchboard of the Carrington Shipping Corporation and the legal trustees who managed the family foundations.
He picked up the receiver. His thumb moved across the mechanical dial with a practiced, rhythmic sweep.
“This is Charles,” he said into the mouthpiece. He didn't wait for a greeting. “Get Arthur Vance on the line. I don't care if he’s at lunch with the federal judge. Tell him to get his legal books out. We’re changing the primary asset distributions for the Carrington Trust, effective as of 12:00 p.m. today.”
He paused, listening to the voice on the other end—the frantic, high-pitched squawk of a corporate secretary realizing that the tectonic plates of the family empire were shifting.
“No, I’m not reconsidering,” Charles said, his voice dropping into that flatline register that meant an entity was about to be liquidated. “I want a full revocation of the residential occupancy permits for 1412 Old Oak Road. Sylvia and Graham have thirty days to vacate the property. The title is being transferred to the educational foundation for the preservation of coastal heritage. And tell Arthur to freeze the secondary credit lines for Blair Carrington’s boutique downtown. If she can't remember to bring a child home from a store, she doesn't need to be managing forty thousand square feet of retail capital.”
He hung up the phone. He didn't look at me. He walked to the small oak side table, picked up a heavy crystal decanter of dark amber scotch, and poured two fingers into a single glass. He didn't offer me any; he knew I didn't drink before the sun went down.
“Go back to the house, Maren,” my grandfather said, taking a slow, steady sip of the liquor. “Take Lily with you. Don't stay in the kitchen. Go to your cottage, pack your books, and pack the child’s clothes. You’re moving into the main house on the Battery on Monday morning.”
May you like
“Grand-Charles,” I began, my voice breaking slightly for the first time since Blair had dropped the plastic bag on the counter.
“Don't argue with me, girl,” the old man growled, but his eyes were softer than his voice as he looked down at the cedar picture frame resting in my tote bag. “I’ve spent forty years watching your mother turn this family into a country club showroom. It’s time to bring some salt back into this house. Go on now. Let them see the bill before the storm hits.”
