Chapter 5 - The Sacred Ground
The morning after their arrest, the sun finally broke through the foothill fog, washing the oak groves and granite outcroppings of Hillcrest Road in brilliant, pale gold.
I woke up at seven in the morning on the small daybed in the sunroom off the kitchen. I hadn't slept in the master bedroom. That room felt contaminated, its air thick with seven years of manufactured devotion and the lingering ghost of an affair carried out while I was bathing our sick child with warm sponges.
I made a pot of black coffee, poured two cups, and carried one out to the front porch where Arthur Ward was already sitting in Granddad’s old cedar rocking chair.
Arthur took the mug with a grateful nod, his breath fogging in the crisp autumn air.
“The arraignment was set for ten o’clock in Department 1,” Arthur said, holding the warm ceramic between his palms. “The District Attorney filed seven felony counts against Darren, including grand theft over five hundred thousand dollars, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud. Elena was charged with five counts, including felony falsification of a public notary acknowledgment.”
“Did they get bail?” I asked.
“The judge set Darren’s bail at one million dollars,” Arthur replied with a tight, satisfied smile. “Elena’s is five hundred thousand. Because their accounts are frozen under the emergency civil lis pendens, they cannot use any assets tied to your marital estate to secure a bond. Darren called his sister in Phoenix three times this morning trying to get her to post her house. She hung up on him after the second call.”
I looked out across the lawn.
Near the stone well-house, where the grass met the pine trees, sat Toby’s wooden swing set. The yellow plastic slide was covered in wet pine needles, and the red canvas swing was swaying gently in the morning breeze, empty and still.
“I need to go into his room, Arthur,” I said softly.
Arthur set his coffee down and looked at me with deep, solemn understanding. “Do you want me to wait here?”
“Yes,” I said. “Just for a little while.”
I stood up, walked back inside, and closed the front door behind me.
The hallway was quiet, the hardwood floors cool against my woolen socks. I stopped in front of Toby’s bedroom door, resting my forehead against the painted pine.
For two days, this room had been a battlefield. Darren had threatened to throw his toys into a dumpster; Elena had planned the colors for her own nursery over his rugs; the movers had hauled his little green dresser onto the wet lawn.
I turned the brass knob and pushed the door open.
The morning sunlight was streaming through the white wood-slat blinds, casting clean, parallel lines of light across Toby’s blue rug.
His small bed was still unmade. The pillow still held the faint, sweet indentation of his head—smelling of baby shampoo, warm flannel, and the lavender lotion I had rubbed into his legs when his bones ached from the infusions.
On the nightstand sat his plastic cup with the dinosaur lid, half-full of water that had evaporated down to the rim. Beside it was the stack of bedtime books: Goodnight Moon, The Little Engine That Could, and the dog-eared copy of Where the Wild Things Are with the corner chewed off when he was cutting his first molars.
I walked to the bed, sat down on the edge of the mattress, and pulled his little woolen blanket into my lap.
I didn't scream. I didn't break down into the wild, ragged hysteria that had torn through me at the graveside.
I wept slowly, quietly, the tears soaking into the worn knit fabric of the blanket, letting the clean, pure sorrow of a mother wash through the hollow spaces where terror and rage had lived for forty-eight hours.
Darren had called this room a reminder of a tragedy he wanted to forget.
He was wrong.
This room was not a tragedy. This room was four years of pure, perfect grace.
It was the sound of little bare feet slapping against the pine boards at six in the morning. It was the sound of Toby laughing until he hiccuped when Granddad’s old hound dog licked his toes. It was the memory of holding him against my chest in the rocking chair, feeling his small heart beating steady and warm against mine while the winter snow piled against the windowpanes.
Darren had looked at this room and seen a real estate encumbrance.
I looked at it and saw everything worth fighting for.
I reached out, straightened his pillow, and pulled his one-eyed teddy bear from my handbag, setting it carefully against the headboard where Toby had kept it every night of his life.
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“You’re safe now, Toby,” I whispered into the quiet room. “Nobody is ever going to touch your things again.”
I stood up, walked to the window, and opened the blinds wide, letting the golden California sun fill every corner of the room until there was no darkness left to hide in.