“Nobody is ever leaving you on the floor, trading your life for a cocktail ring, or stealing your birthright again, my sweet angel,” Chancellor Natalie Eleanor Mercer replied:
“The house is clean.”
“The telephone was answered.”
“The uniform held true.”
“The line holds true.”
Mounted in solid teak on the cedar wall of the pavilion behind our rocking chairs...
Beneath a clean pane of museum-grade non-reflective glass...
Was the Four-Inch Solid-Titanium Transponder Key.
Beside it, resting inside a velvet-lined rosewood shadowbox, was the broken gold nib of Chief Justice Arthur Vance’s Montblanc fountain pen.
And beside the pen, preserved in a miniature bronze frame...
Was that single, recovered handwritten note reading YOU ALWAYS SAID YOUR TIME WAS WORTH MILLIONS SO I WON'T TAKE ANOTHER MINUTE OF IT, stamped VOYD AB INITIO // COVENANT REDEEMED, resting alongside Arthur Mercer Senior's original handwritten 1944 sovereign survey patent:
THE MERCER HOMESTEAD // PARCEL 10
ACREAGE: 40 MILES OF SUBTERRANEAN BEDROCK
