Chapter 3 - Whispers from the Grave
We burst through the heavy double doors into the guest suite.
The antique brass floor lamp had been knocked over, its heavy silk shade crushed, the bulb shattered against the Persian rug. In the corner of the room, wedged into the narrow space between a towering mahogany armoire and the wall, sat my father.
He was curled into a tight, fetal ball, his arms wrapped over his skull, his fingers pulling violently at his own gray hair. He was drenched in a cold, profuse sweat, his eyes wide and bloodshot, staring at the Persian rug as though the floor were turning into liquid fire.
“Arthur!” I cried, falling to my knees in front of him, heedless of the jagged glass shards scattered near my slippers. “Arthur, stop, please! You’re safe! Look at me, you’re safe!”
“Don't let them pour!” he shrieked, his voice climbing into a terrifying register. He didn't see me. His mind was entirely subsumed by a hell that had occurred twenty years prior. “The caisson... forty feet deep! Victor has the iron bar! He struck my head! Oh God, my drawings... the cantilevered suspension system... he took the patents!”
Julian stepped forward, his face ashen, but as soon as his shadow fell over my father, the old man reacted with primal, violent hysteria.
Arthur’s gaze locked onto Julian’s face. He let out a dry, strangled gasp, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
“Marcus?” he whimpered, his voice suddenly hollow, childishly small. He pointed a shaking, gnarled finger at Julian. “Marcus... you promised me. You said we were partners. You said the Vanguard design was our monument. Why did you let your brother do it? Why did you stand there while Victor hit me?”
Julian stopped as if he had run into a wall of solid steel. His breath left him in a ragged, wheezing cough. He looked at Arthur, then looked at his own reflection in the dressing mirror across the room.
Julian possessed the exact same square jaw, the same deep-set hazel eyes, and the same towering, broad-shouldered frame as his late father, Marcus Sterling. To a man whose memory had been frozen in the amber of a single, horrific night in November 2004, Julian wasn't a sympathetic stranger.
Julian was his murderer.
“Get away from him!” I snapped at Julian, pure maternal and protective fury surging through my veins. “Get out! Don't you see what you’re doing to him? Get out of this room!”
Julian’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. He raised his hands defensively, his face twisted in grief and guilt. “Mariana, I didn't—”
“Out!” I screamed.
Julian took two steps back, his shoulders slumped in utter defeat, and pulled the door shut behind him.
The moment the door clicked, the suffocating tension in the room lessened by an infinitesimal fraction. I crawled closer to the trembling man in the corner. I didn't use words of logic. I didn't speak of dates, or companies, or twenty years of lost time.
Instead, I began to hum.
It was an old Scottish lullaby my mother used to play on the upright piano while my father sat at his drafting table in the living room, sketching his intricate, impossible skyscrapers.
*“O can ye sew cushions, can ye sew sheets...”*
My voice was cracked, choked with weeping, but I kept the rhythm steady. Slowly, miraculously, the violent trembling in my father’s limbs began to subside. His fingers released their death-grip on his hair. His hands drifted down to his lap.
He turned his head slowly, his cloudy eyes fixing on mine. The wild, unhinged madness in his expression receded, replaced by a profound, heartbreaking lucidity that lasted for only a few precious seconds.
“Mariana?” he whispered.
“Yes, Papa,” I sobbed, reaching out and gently taking his battered, calloused hand in mine. His skin was cold, but his grip was surprisingly firm. “It’s me. It’s your Mari.”
“Your mother’s hands,” he murmured, his thumb weakly brushing against my knuckles. “You have your mother’s hands. Long fingers. Made for Chopin. Did you... did you play the Nocturne today?”
A sob caught in my throat, almost choking me. “I played it, Papa. I played it, but you weren't there.”
A look of crushing, infinite sorrow washed over his gaunt features. A tear carved a clean path through the pale skin of his cheek.
“I tried to come,” he whispered, his voice fading into a reedy rasp. “I had the yellow roses on the front seat. But Victor called. He said the foundation at the river site had cracked. He said the entire tower would fall if I didn't come inspect the core caisson immediately. When I got there... there was no crack. There were no workers. Just Victor. And Marcus.”
He closed his eyes, shuddering as a wave of physical pain seemed to ripple through his scarred skull.
“Marcus had a briefcase. They wanted me to sign over the full structural patents for Vanguard Tower. They said if I gave them the patents, they would give me five million dollars and let me leave. I refused. I told them the design was mine—it was my masterpiece, meant to honor your mother. Victor laughed. He... he picked up a length of rebar from the scrap pile.”
My father’s hand squeezed mine with agonizing intensity.
“I remember the sound of my own skull cracking,” he whispered, his eyes rolling beneath his closed lids. “Then... the dark. They threw me into the back of a van. I woke up in a pit of trash weeks later. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know my name. Every time I tried to think, the pain was like fire. For twenty years, Mariana... for twenty years, the only thing that kept me from stepping in front of a train was a picture of a little girl at a piano. But I couldn't remember her face. Oh God, I couldn't remember her face.”
He broke down, weeping into my lap. I wrapped my arms around his frail shoulders, rocking him as if he were my child, burying my face in his coarse gray hair.
Outside the window, lightning flashed across the midnight sky, illuminating the sprawling gardens of the estate.
May you like
And in that flash of light, I saw the sleek silhouette of a black European sedan parked silently at the end of our private driveway, its headlights extinguished, its engine idling in the rain.
***
