Allison walked around the desk and that’s when she found what she’d come for. Photographs, a dozen of them in plain black frames, sat on Dr. Capello’s desk in an array that spanned twenty years or more.
On the far right corner of the desk was a picture of the five of them—Dr. Capello, Thora, Deacon, Roland and her. It had been taken on the back deck with the sun and the ocean behind them. A summer picture, they were all in shorts and Tshirts. Allison grinned at the sight of her tiny self in Roland’s arms. She was the shortest one, which meant Roland had to hold her up so that more than just the top of her head would be in the picture. She couldn’t quite remember when that picture had been taken. She slipped the photograph out of the frame and read the back.
July 30, 1997—the kids and me with our new addition, Allison.
The picture had been taken one month after she’d come to The Dragon, and she looked happy and healthy and at home. One of the family already.
Next to that picture Allison found a photograph of orange-haired Thora and black-haired Deacon playing tag on the wet sand. Thora and Deacon—otherwise known as “the Twins.” They weren’t related, Deacon and Thora, but they were the same age, had the same birthday by coincidence and were inseparable. For a long time, Allison had simply assumed they were twins despite looking nothing alike.
As the photos progressed from right to left, the children in the pictures aged from kids to preteens to teenagers to adults. Somewhere around the middle section, the teenage years, she and Kendra and Oliver disappeared from the pictures. Only Roland, Deacon and Thora were in the photos on the left of the desk. Allison knew where she’d gone—home to live with her aunt. But what about the other two? Where were they now? In the three farthest pictures she saw Thora, as a beautiful young woman, in a pretty strapless prom dress with Deacon and Roland standing next her and beaming like proud papas. Another photograph showcased Deacon and Thora in their graduation robes and caps, grinning awkwardly at the camera. The picture next to that one was of Deacon on a Kawasaki motorcycle, looking terribly dashing in a leather jacket, his black hair wild from wind.
One picture held her eye longer than the others—Roland, about age twenty-four or twenty-five, stood in front of a chapel wearing the black robes of a Benedictine monk. He wasn’t smiling in the photograph, but he didn’t look sad, either. Pensive? A little. Maybe lonely, too? Or not. Maybe that’s what she wanted to believe. It wasn’t as jarring as she thought it would be to see him as a monk. He looked like himself, only younger, his hair an even lighter blond, still parted down the center and tucked behind the ears like she remembered so well. In the photograph she spied an eyebrow piercing—an endearing mix of medieval and modern, just like Roland himself. Curious to see when this picture had been taken, she slipped the photo out of the frame and read the back—Brother Paul, it said, 2009. But that wasn’t all she found. Hidden behind the picture of Roland in his black robes, Allison found another photograph.
The second photograph was of four very young children. She recognized three of the four—Roland, Deacon and Thora—but the last boy she’d never seen before. He had olive skin and dark eyes. She imagined his hair was dark, too, but she couldn’t see it since he wore a bucket hat with Clark Beach emblazoned on the front. On the back of the photograph it read:
The kids meet their new brother, Antonio Russo, age eight. February 1995.
New brother? She didn’t remember any of them mentioning a boy named Antonio. He must have been another foster child Dr. Capello had taken in who’d come and gone before Allison had arrived. It appeared the picture had been taken in the sunroom. She recognized the big white couch and the windows behind them. All of the kids wore big cheesy grins in the photograph, all of them but Antonio, who stared blankly at the camera.
Allison put the photographs back exactly as she found them. She made a mental note to ask Roland later who Antonio was. During her time at The Dragon, a handful of kids had come for a week or two each before being placed with relatives. Maybe that’s what had happened to Antonio. They had thought he’d stay for a long time but a relative had been found to claim him. These things were sad but they happened in the system. The question was...why was the photograph with Antonio hidden behind another picture? It wasn’t like Dr. Capello couldn’t afford another frame. She’d ask Roland about that, too.
As Allison was leaving the office, she noticed a framed newspaper article on the wall by the door. The photograph in black and white was of flip-flops, seven pairs of them, all lined up in a row, and the headline read The Lucky Ones—Sick Kids in Oregon Find a Hero in Dr. Vincent Capello and a New Home in a House Called The Dragon. It was a profile of Dr. Capello and his work as a philanthropist and foster father, dated 1998. Allison hadn’t seen it before, or if she had, she’d been too young to remark on it. Intrigued, she began to read.
The call came on a random rainy Wednesday when Vincent Capello was scrubbing out after surgery—a child with a brain tumor that left the boy partially blind.
“The president for you,” Dr. Capello was told, “on line one.”
“President of what?” he’d asked.
“The country,” the nurse said.
It seemed Dr. Vincent Capello was then President Clinton’s top pick to replace the outgoing surgeon general. The call was brief and polite, with Capello turning the offer down in under two minutes.
“It was an honor to be asked,” Capello said of the position. “But I had kids to take care of.”
Allison laughed in surprise. She’d had no idea Dr. Capello had once been offered the surgeon general’s post. And he’d turned it down for his kids? Amazing. She kept reading.
Vincent Capello and his children live in picturesque Cape Arrow, in a grand old house that was built as a gift from a man to his beloved wife and later became the scene of her murder.
Allison paused. Murder? She’d never heard this story about The Dragon.
In 1913, wealthy timber baron Victor Courtney purchased one hundred acres of pristine coastal land and began work on the beach home his wife, Daisy, had longed for since leaving her old-money Boston family to marry the upstart Oregon millionaire. Work was completed on the house in 1921 and Victor and Daisy moved in shortly after. No expense was to be spared as the house was built to satisfy Daisy’s every whim—a Victorian turret, a library of first editions on solid oak shelves, a sunroom, a drawing room, a formal dining room, servants’ quarters and ocean-facing windows galore. At first, the Courtneys were happy in their new home, but a few months later their troubles began.
“My grandmother Daisy had always been cheerful, they say,” Capello said on the day of our interview. “And she loved her daughter, my mother, doted on her, and she wanted many more children. But she miscarried shortly after they moved into this house. Then miscarried again a year later. She fell into a deep depression. Friends said she changed completely and could be found day and night, rain or shine, walking the beach and weeping, talking to herself and her lost children.