Chapter 13 - The Whispering Cedar and the Living Daughter
Emily dropped to her knees on the damp grass, throwing her arms around her mother before Rebecca could hit the cold earth.
The impact knocked the breath from both of them, but neither cared.
Rebecca’s trembling, flour-dusted hands came up frantically, clutching Emily’s face, her hair, her shoulders, her back, touching every inch of her flesh as if trying to prove to her broken mind that this was not another cruel, medication-induced hallucination.
"You're warm," Rebecca sobbed hysterically, her tears soaking into Emily’s black wool coat.
"You're solid."
"You have a heartbeat."
"Oh God, you have a heartbeat!"
"I am here, Mama," Emily wept, burying her face into the curve of Rebecca’s neck, inhaling the intoxicating, long-lost scent of sweet flour and lemon soap.
"I am alive."
"I didn't die on the highway."
"They lied to you, Mama."
"They lied to you about everything!"
Rebecca pulled back slightly, her vision blurred with tears as she cupped Emily’s face between her palms.
She looked into Emily’s brown eyes, searching for the four-year-old child she had watched disappear into the darkness of an unmarked police van.
"Captain Vale said you burned," Rebecca cried, her voice cracking into high, agonized shrieks that echoed through the quiet cemetery.
"He brought me the death certificate."
"He made me come to this grave."
"He told me that if I ever tried to find you, bad men would dig you up."
"I sat here every Sunday for twenty-seven years, baby!"
"Twenty-seven years talking to a stone!"
"I know, Mama, I know," Emily sobbed, holding her mother’s shaking hands against her own chest so Rebecca could feel the steady, thunderous beating of her heart.
"Vale stole our lives to protect himself."
"He took me away, changed my birth certificate, and dumped me into the foster care system under Emma’s name."
"He thought if he hid me under another girl’s name, we would never find each other."
At the mention of the name Emma, Rebecca’s body went completely rigid.
The wild, delirious joy in her eyes suddenly collided with twenty-seven years of agonizing guilt and terror.
"Emma?" Rebecca whispered, her hands gripping Emily’s arms with desperate urgency.
"My sister's baby?"
"What did Vale do to little Emma?"
"Did he kill Sarah's child?"
Before Emily could answer, a gentle, familiar voice spoke from the shadow of the willow tree.
"He didn't kill me, Aunt Rebecca."
Rebecca turned her head slowly, her breath catching in her throat once more.
Walking across the grass was Maya Lin.
She had taken off her dark sunglasses.
Her green eyes—the exact emerald green of her mother Sarah—shone brightly with unshed tears.
She stopped three paces from the stone bench, looking down at the aunt who had chosen exile in a cornfield just to keep her safe.
"You gave up your life in the city so Vale wouldn't hurt me," Maya said, her voice dropping into a soft, reverent whisper.
"Vale put me in Briarwood Asylum for nine years, Aunt Rebecca."
"He tried to drug my memories away."
"He tried to make me forget the porch swing."
"He tried to make me forget the taste of the apple you gave us before the boots kicked down the front door."
Maya knelt down on the other side of Rebecca, taking her aunt’s right hand into her own.
"I survived because I remembered your face," Maya wept.
"I survived because I knew that somewhere in this world, my aunt was still loving us."
Rebecca stared at the two grown women kneeling on either side of her in the mud.
Her mind, which had been locked in a frozen, gray winter of grief since November of 1999, suddenly thawed in a roaring torrent of overwhelming love.
She pulled both of them into her arms, wrapping her denim coat around them, weeping with an intensity that seemed to pull twenty-seven years of poison straight out of her soul.
"My babies," Rebecca cried, rocking back and forth between them on the grass.
"My sweet, beautiful girls."
"You came back for me."
"God heard my prayers and brought my babies home."
A few yards away, Lucas DeLuca and Arthur Blake stood near the weeping willow, their heads bowed in profound, solemn respect.
Arthur wiped his glasses with his handkerchief, his weathered face wet with tears of relief and redemption.
Lucas watched the three women embrace, feeling the heavy, suffocating shadow of his grandfather’s guilt finally lifting from the DeLuca name.
After several minutes, Rebecca looked up through her tears and noticed Lucas standing like a guardian beside the tree.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, recognizing the high cheekbones, the square jaw, and the unmistakable posture of the DeLuca bloodline.
"Anthony?" Rebecca whispered in brief, disoriented confusion.
"No, Mrs. Hayes," Lucas said, stepping forward with gentle humility and extending a hand to help the weeping mother rise from the wet grass.
"Anthony passed away three years ago."
"I am his grandson, Lucas."
"And I am here to fulfill the final promise my grandfather made to your family."
Rebecca took Lucas’s hand, allowing him to lift her gently to her feet.
"Anthony spent his entire life trying to find Emily," Lucas explained, his voice low and sincere.
"He left a letter, a trust fund, and a team of men dedicated to tearing Vale's empire apart."
"Last night in our city, federal marshals arrested Captain Richard Vale for the murder of Julian DeLuca and the kidnapping of your children."
"The man who terrorized you is in chains."
"The empire that silenced you has been destroyed."
"And your daughter is never going to be taken from your arms again."
Rebecca looked from Lucas to Emily, then down at the granite headstone of Emily Hayes that sat like a monument to a murdered past.
A fierce, fiery dignity returned to Rebecca’s eyes, the strength of the proud logistics clerk who had once defied corrupt detectives on the waterfront docks.
She walked over to the stone, picked up the white carnations, and tossed them aside.
Then, with both hands, she shoved the gray granite marker with all her strength.
The stone, loosened by decades of autumn rain and frost, wobbled and toppled backward into the grass with a heavy, hollow thud, exposing the empty dirt beneath.
"No more graves," Rebecca declared, her voice ringing clear and triumphant through the cemetery.
May you like
"My daughter is standing in the sunlight."
"And we are finally going home."
