Chapter 24: The Empire

On the fourteenth of October the following year, Lucinda cut a red ribbon in front of the county hospital.

The sign over the new door read MARSH REHABILITATION CENTER.

It was named for her mother, who had worked a ward like it for thirty years.

Two hundred people stood on the lawn in the cold sun, and the cameras were there again, but this time they were kind.

"This building has forty beds," Lucinda said into the microphone. "No patient pays for the first year. I know exactly what a night nurse is worth."

A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd.

Gordon Throckmorton had been sentenced in the spring, to life.

Pierce had taken twenty-five years, and his lawyer had cried harder than he had.

That was all she cared to say about it.

She cut the ribbon.

The boy of twenty, in a gray T-shirt, walked across the threshold on his own two feet.

The crowd cheered.

Alden stood at the end of the front row with his hands in his pockets.

His mother had called a shareholders' meeting and voted him back into his chair at Ferrars Industries.

He had given the chair up again within the month.

Now he ran a small foundation that did only one thing, which was to pay for night shifts on rehab floors.

He walked three nights a week without a cane.

Eleanor sat beside him, in her gray wool suit, and the security man stood three paces behind her.

"You can stop," Eleanor told the security man. "She's safe."

"Old habit, ma'am," the security man said.

"Then at least stand somewhere else."

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