Stone Hearts - Vol. I Casa de Sinclair

January 4th, 1990

The drive into Capstone was bizarre, and Marissa could only imagine it was because this time, she wasn’t coming back to visit, but to move back to the city.

It was a beautiful city, though. The familiar highrises framed against the backdrop of Porter’s harbor were unmistakably Capstone’s legacy vista to its working core.

Newbies to the city would cruise down C-1 East and be confronted with dominating Gothic Revival-style skyscrapers, the beautiful, ancient-feeling architecture of the college and museums, turn-of-the-century cathedrals modeled after medieval basilicas, and Capstone’s prestigious theater’s dome visible from miles away.

For a returning resident, the Capstone skyline just felt like home.

Marissa couldn’t really explain why that feeling was so strong that day. Nostalgia maybe? It had been over a decade since she had actually lived in the city. She had spent an entire other lifetime in Chicago, had kids, and built a whole new person beyond New York State in the wind-swept Midwest, but in her heart, she supposed she had been and always would be Capstonian to her core.

Her kids?

Not so much.

She glanced back over her shoulder before muscling the Jeep Wagoneer toward her exit on Coastal Parkway, and could admit it was a big change for all of them.

Lyra, at the very least, was occupying herself somewhat peacefully. She had a verifiable army of toys on the back seat, including three troll dolls and her current favorite Polly Pocket in hand, along with an oversized stuffed orangutan named Harry, whom she was still in mourning over.

The minute before Marissa had hustled them into the car for their journey East, she had caught Lyra giving Harry a “long overdue haircut”, fully under the impression that his red locks would grow back in due time. The tragedy that had befallen the household once Lyra realized Harry had a permanent mullet had been…well, it had been a colorful exit from Illinois.

Emilian was also in the back, staring out at the city as they navigated toward Sconce Bay and their new home, his dark gaze taking in the sights and ocean with bright-eyed interest.

Marissa wasn’t quite so worried about her two youngest. At four and five years old, Emilian and Lyra were adaptable, not even in Kindergarten yet. They had years to settle into Capstone.

But Zach?

She glanced over and found the eight-year-old zoned into his Game Boy, playing Tetris as if his life depended on it.

He seemed intent to hate every moment of the drive, and while he wasn’t screaming and yelling about it, Marissa knew he was feeling the burn of this transition. Suddenly she had plucked him up midway through his second-grade year; he was leaving behind his friends, his childhood home, his city, all on the heels of his father’s death.

Marissa got it, but what the hell did she say?

It’s not my fault? We don’t have a choice because Mommy is fucked? That Daddy screwed them all and then left them behind…?

No. No, she didn’t say that, but some days she wanted to. Some days she wanted to explain to Zach that life just hit you like a ton of bricks and that as an adult you had to make shitty, uncomfortable choices. Choices that affected everyone, no matter how much it hurt them.

Not yet though.

She was determined, if nothing else, to keep Jenson’s memory as clean as she could for her kids’ sake. She’d swallow down the reality of her late husband on her own dime, and let her children have those good memories of the man.

It was a bitter pill sometimes, but that was her job as their mother, right?

She blew out a breath before turning a try-hard smile to her eldest child. “They have great sports teams here, Zach. I know when I went to Beaufman Elementary, they had awesome programs. We can sign you up for the soccer team out here, maybe baseball if you want to go out for it again?”

He grunted at her, lifting his head and giving her the flattest, most unimpressed expression before shaking his head.

God, but sometimes he’d make a face that looked so much like Jenson it made her heart hurt. Like right now. That same impatient expression when he was trying to swallow down his anger but barely kept it under wraps.

That definitely wasn’t her trait. Marissa was more a 'let it fly’ kinda gal, but Zach had inherited the infuriating ability to swallow it down from his dad and smile pretty under duress in the exact same way Jenson had always done.

Even when their life had been crumbling apart, even during their screaming matches in the living room while the kids hid upstairs, Jenson would get that same expression of restrained agitation, biting his inner cheek to keep from saying unforgivable things in the heat of the moment.

Amazing how something so extraordinarily agitating was suddenly so achingly nostalgic.

She blinked out of it when he deigned to reply and focused on the road, hands tightening on the wheel.

“I don’t want to do stupid baseball. The last season is already over.”

Marissa glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “I know this shocks you every year, Zach, but the season does restart, you know.”

He scoffed so hard his head almost snapped back before he slapped back into the seat and glared out the window. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to play for the Beaufman Titans. Beaufman. What kind of name is Beaufman, anyway?” He planted a Converse on the dash, staring at the encroaching seaside community of Sconce Bay and the dwindling remnants of Porter retreating behind them. “It may as well be Fartman Titans.”

Lyra burst out laughing from the back seat. “Fartman?”

“Okay. Let’s not—” Marissa bit her lower lip to stifle a laugh when Emilian perked up like a gopher and yelled,

“Zach’s going to Fart School!” Then he dissolved into a series of high-pitched giggles, jerking back with the skill of long practice when Zach whipped around in his seat to glare at him.

“Shut up! You’ll go to Fart School Junior in like two years, ingrate!"

“Zach, can we not call your four-year-old brother an ingrate?” Marissa rubbed her forehead, suddenly battling a minor headache. Thirteen hours on the road and she was ready to be done with it.

“What’s an ingrate?” Lyra sang it at her brother, dancing a troll toward Zach’s arm distractedly before she abruptly threw it at him with a smirk. He caught it and looked at her like he was contemplating murder.

“Lyra, don’t throw things, damn it.” Marissa snapped and caught Zach’s hand when he hefted the rock-hard plastic nightmare like he was going to peg his little sister in the face with it. She wrested it free before throwing the stupid thing into the middle console. “Can we all behave for like, ten minutes, please?!”

“I’m hungry, mommy.” Emilian squirmed and pointed to the ocean. “Can we go fishing?”

Marissa pursed her lips on an exhausted laugh. She’d admit she was also desperate for food, but more desperate to get out of the vehicle, free her offspring to the wild, and then maybe see if her Grandfather’s caretaker would consider making them a feast or two. “We’ll be at the Casa soon, baby. Hang tight, okay?”

“Kay.” He sank back, then peered back over the water. “Can we get McDonald’s?”

“OH!” Lyra shot upright happily, her equally brown eyes glittering like captured gems with delight. “I want a Happy Meal!”

“Why?” Zach rolled his eyes at her. “So you can open and lose your toy and cry about it for three hours?”

“Noooooo.” Lyra scowled at him. “I’m collecting them all. I’m an archeologist like Great Grandpa.”

“Me too.” Emilian said it so certainly that Marissa had to smooth a smile down.

“Sweetie, Grandpa is a ship owner, remember? He collects really fun stuff, though. We can stretch out then walk around the property when we get there.” She smiled at her daughter in the rearview, glad at least someone in the vehicle was delighted to be alive that morning.

“Why bother? It’s just a bunch of old junk.” Zach murmured it before turning his attention back to the Game Boy.

Marissa sighed and wasn’t about to argue with him. At this point, it was what it was, and he’d feel how he felt about it.

They had fifteen minutes to go until they hit the gates, but man—it could not come fast enough.

~

So perhaps Marissa had undersold her grandfather as a ‘ship owner ’—just a hair.

Casa de Sinclair was an old-money leviathan, and Emilio Sinclair may or may not have been former board chair and majority stockholder of Sinclair & Sons shipping.

Sprawling at thirty-two thousand square feet, the Gothic-inspired estate was colossal and screamed its prestige to the rafters. It perched on beautiful gated grounds spanning over thirty-five acres, a place so unique that Marissa couldn’t even begin to describe to her kids the many-splendored fantasy that the manor truly was.

The home had been in the family since the mid-1800s, boasting beautiful gardens with arbors and brooks, and nearly mystical-feeling patches of forest butting up to the Casa’s backyards. It had two courtyards, the front sporting a massive circular drive that a valet could have used to take incoming visitors’ vehicles to the adjoining five-car garage.

The back courtyard was unreal, Roman-inspired, with circular stone arches encircling statuary displays Marissa had grown up running through. Endless adventures and explorations. A child could get lost for hours in mystery and magic and still be within shouting distance for parents to call them back home in time for supper.

Even through the immense span of high stone gates and wrought-iron toppers, you became aware you were driving toward a piece of Capstone history.

Marissa was always embarrassed to admit it, but she could trace her family line to genuine Spanish aristocracy back to the 1500s. The home had been the crown jewel of the Sinclair family since their immigration from Spain back when some of the family had moved to the New World.

All Marissa would say was that her family surely hadn’t arrived as struggling immigrants trying to work a rail line. Nope. Great-great-grandpa had been a shipping magnate, opening Sinclair & Sons Shipping Co., and setting up his future generations with an inheritance and company worth millions.

Of course, times changed, business fluctuated, and the Casa was no longer the flourishing gem of the early 1900s boasting catered parties, glittering staff, and hosting socialite conventions.

Still, somehow in its quieter era, Marissa felt she liked it better. She had seen pictures of early family hosting parties, their portraits and paintings hung in family parlors, and the dazzling glitz and glam. She liked what Emilio had done with the place instead. Namely, he had closed off Wings to save money, drained the pool in the East Wing, and created swaths of galleries for his immense art and occult collections.

For as long as Marissa could recall, her grandfather had been obsessed with collecting relics from the past, and it showed immediately as soon as you drove up to the gates.

Flanking each side of the gateposts for as long as memory served were two eight-foot medieval Grotesques. One, Marissa knew, was authentic, her grandfather tentatively dating it to the eleventh century. The duplicate was a far more recent commission, a near-exact replica, but Marissa had always thought the original was better. Its details were unreal; the care the sculpture undertook was so beyond extraordinary there was no doubt in her mind why her grandfather had snapped the guardian up at a German estate sale decades ago.

Eight feet of perfectly sculpted marble and granite, the winged ‘Knight’ looked more like a demon who had infiltrated a gothic armory and decided to become the terror of his region. The horned helm covered his entire face, the slitted visor layered, creating an effect of an eyeless visage. Massive bat-like wings arced overhead and folded back, making him appear even larger than he was.

As they rumbled past up the drive, Marissa had a moment of gloating inwardly when even Zach turned off his Game Boy, Lyra unbuckled and smashed her face against the glass to look at them in passing, and Emilian was open-mouthed, staring at the Gate Guardian on the way by, huge eyes made ten times bigger in his awe.

“Holy moly.” Zach breathed it, staring ahead at the sprawling manor. “I forgot it was so big.”

“Well, you were only five last time we were here.” Marissa breathed a sigh of relief, seeing the home for the first time in…Lord, she didn’t even know. Three years? Either way, that feeling was visceral, spreading down her spine as she cruised at a crawl towards the double-doored entry.

It felt like she was coming home, and that was amazing to experience again.

It had been a long, long time since she had experienced a sense of homecoming. Life had been so hectic, so busy crashing and burning around her for the past two years that she had almost forgotten what it felt like to see a front door and want to cross a threshold.

“Mommy?” Emilian twisted his face and gripped the seat to stare at the Guardian on the way by. “What is that Knight doing there? Is he real?”

“No. Well, he’s a statue, baby. He’s real old.” She smiled at him in the rearview, delighted when his lips pursed like he was sure she might be lying.

“He looks real. We should ask him if he wants McDonald’s.”

“Mama! Look!” Lyra almost screamed it in Marissa’s ear.

She was pointing ahead at the door opening, but Marissa had already clocked the pair coming out.

When she saw her grandfather come out with his caretaker Beau hovering an arm behind him in case he decided to careen down the four large steps into the dirt, her heart almost imploded seeing him again. Tears pricked her eyes hard, but she wasn’t about to weep the moment she got there. Later maybe, but not right away.

Emilio Sinclair was ninety-three years old, and still a titan in every way but the fact that his body was failing him steadily.

He still had a nearly full head of wispy white hair; his skin was deeply wrinkled, scarred by tans he had acquired from both time on the water and being scorched in the deepest recesses of the world abroad. From Egypt to Norway, the Middle East to Japan, Emilio had traversed the world on his mission to collect and archive endless works of art.

For Marissa’s entire life, it seemed like he had never aged, not until a few years ago when she had come to visit after his heart attack.

She had blinked and realized that her previously robust patriarch was becoming frailer. That his straight-backed demeanor was suddenly a bit more bent. His eyes were just a little weighted and weary. He had hated it but started using a wheelchair when he went out rather than walk long distances, and Beau had been his final admission that he just couldn’t do it all alone anymore.

Beau, on the other hand, Marissa loved for Emilio.

For one, Beau didn’t let Emilio get away with being a stubborn old fool and pushing himself too hard. For two, she knew they had an amazing relationship. Beau was thirty-seven, golden blond and a little squishy around the midsection, but otherwise strongly built through the shoulders and chest. He had worked as a Nurse, then a hospice worker, before answering Emilio’s call for an in-home ‘steward.’

Not a caregiver—a steward, and to call him anything but would send her grandfather into a tizzy of annoyance.

She parked, grinning like an idiot while Emilio eased down the last step to meet them. Zach opened his door, staring up at the manor’s facade, mouth agape, while Lyra all but scratched at the back door to be let out.

Marissa didn’t miss Emilian staring at Emilio like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of him, and in truth, she wasn’t shocked. The last time they had seen each other, Emilian had been one. They were almost ninety years apart in age, and surely her grandfather was probably the oldest man Emilian would ever have memory of in the future.

The thought made her painfully wistful before she spilled out with a bright smile. “Hey, yayo!”

“Marissa. Sweet angel.” Emilio beamed and leaned forward on the elegant head of his cane with a small smirk before turning his equally dark chestnut-colored eyes to Zach. “Hello, young sir. Welcome to the Casa.”

Zach straightened, eyes a little too wide on him before he remembered his manners and surged forward with a hand out.

The handshake made Marissa warm to her toes, especially when Emilio very seriously took Zach’s smaller hand with grave sincerity.

“It’s very nice to see you again, Grandpa Emilio.”

Marissa bit her cheek over the very adult vibe happening but grinned at Beau while she pulled the back door open to let out one eager little girl who shot out like an over-anxious golden retriever. “Hey, Beau. How’s it going?”

Beau beamed and whirled a finger around overhead. “Living the good life and wrangling this crotchety old bugger.”

Emilio rolled his face over with a look of long-suffering patience at the younger man. He flicked a brow before saying sarcastically, “Steward, can you get the bags off the top of their car, please?”

Beau frowned back at him before exhaling with dramatic lamentation. “Yeah, sure. Why not? What’s up, little man?” He gave Zach a fist bump on the way by and barely dodged getting trampled by Lyra darting up to Emilio.

Instantly, she caught his maroon cardigan earnestly, bouncing on her toes like she was motorized. “You’re sooooo old! Is your skin soft? My grandma had really soft skin. She used Jergens!”

“Lyra!” Marissa couldn’t keep her horrified tone to herself while she reached for her petrified four-year-old in the back seat. “Good grief, girl! What did I tell you about calling people old?”

“It’s fine. I am old.” Emilio chuckled before leaning down conspiratorially. “I don’t know about soft skin but, I do know something.”

Lyra looked fascinated and leaned in towards him, making such heavy eye contact she almost went off balance. “What?” She glanced at Zach’s equally curious expression when he too leaned in, and frowned before turning her attention back to Emilio.

Marissa shut the door, petting over Emilian’s head when he dug his face into her neck and made the approach in time to hear her grandfather whispering, “Beau made chocolate chip cookies. Do you like those?”

Lyra nodded slowly like she had been enchanted, eyes shining with the delight only a five-year-old could get over conspiracies and cookies. “Yes.”

“Me too. You see, not so different after all.” Emilio chuckled and clapped Zach’s shoulder when he straightened up. “What about you, Zach? You like a good cookie in your life?”

Zach looked down, flushing hot over his ears under the direct interrogation, and stubbed his toe into the gravel a little sheepishly before nodding. “Yeah. I like cookies.”

“Good man.” Emilio grinned when Marissa gave him an exasperated look but spread an arm for a hug. “What? Cookies are bonding, Marissa, and Beau makes them from scratch. The man is a godsend.”

“I heard that; can’t take it back now!” Beau glanced back from where he was unlacing the straps for the luggage and flashed a satisfied grin over the accolades.

Marissa squeezed him gently, but with all the fondness and gratefulness she could muster in the move.

God, but he smelled exactly like she recalled—not like Jergens, but an expensive, richly robust leather-and-spice cologne.

“I missed you.” As soon as she said it, the waterworks started, and she hated that for a moment she felt like she was a kid again. Suddenly, she was ten years old with this same man hugging her, telling her that the monsters outside couldn’t get her while she was in his house. The difference was that now the monsters were bullshit things like life, money, and being a fucking widow with three kids depending on her to be strong when she felt like crumbling.

“I missed you too, angelita.” He kissed her temple before smiling at a peeping Emilian. “Hello, niño. Do you want some cookies as well?”

Marissa had to laugh when she felt Emilian nod uncertainly, staring at Emilio like the man had two heads and a dragon’s tail. However, the power of cookies, it would seem, was universal because not a second later he piped up.

“Your Knight wants cookies too.” He pointed back to the gate with true concern over it.

Emilio glanced over at the towering figures before nodding solemnly. “Of course. Steward!”

Beau twisted back, exasperated already, while he dragged a travel bag down off the roof. “What now?”

“Cookies for the gate guards, stat!”

“Yeah-huh. I’ll get right on that.” He hefted the bag over his shoulder before starting for the doors. “Come on people. I don’t want Oldie to fall and crack a hip out here. At least most of the house has carpet.”

Emilio laughed but turned, happily accepting Lyra’s hand when she slipped it into his.

Lyra was all but skipping while they started up the steps. “I love chocolate chip cookies. You should try them with M&Ms. That makes them better. Have you had Snickerdoodles?? Those are so good! Mommy makes them for Santa every year!”

Marissa watched Zach trudge up the steps after the retreating group and brought up the rear with her smallest firmly wrapped around her neck like lichen on a rock. She couldn’t help but take the moment to really just savor the sight unfolding.

She looked up at the familiar arched entry, the beautiful trellises and the stone facade, and felt it in her heart before crossing the threshold.

They were home.