Chapter 3 - Seven Months in Plain Sight
Quinn left through the service entrance at nine-fifteen that night.
Vincent watched from the upstairs window and hated himself for noticing how small her bag was.
Seven months in his house.
One bag.
No family photographs.
No framed diploma.
No stack of books left on a bedside table.
She had lived as if she might need to disappear between one breath and the next.
Dominic remained downstairs in the study.
Vincent let him wait.
For once, being left alone with his own choices seemed useful.
At ten, Vincent found Mrs. Alvarez in the kitchen wrapping leftover pastry in wax paper.
She had managed the household for eleven years and possessed the rare ability to disapprove of armed men without changing her tone.
“Did Quinn leave?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Alvarez pressed the fold flat.
“That’s a shame.”
Vincent leaned against the counter. “Did you know she was Dominic’s sister?”
Her hands stopped.
“No.”
He believed her.
“She never talked about family?”
“Not much.”
“What did she talk about?”
Mrs. Alvarez considered him.
“You.”
Vincent straightened.
“Me?”
“She asked what kind of man you were when nobody important was in the room.”
The phrasing bothered him.
“What did you say?”
“That you are quieter with staff than you are with guests. That you remember birthdays badly but hospital dates well. That you don’t yell unless you’re afraid. That you think saying ‘handle it’ counts as a complete sentence.”
Vincent gave her a look.
Mrs. Alvarez shrugged. “She asked.”
“Why would she care?”
“I assumed she had eyes.”
He ignored that.
“What else?”
“She asked about Dominic.”
There it was.
“What did she want to know?”
“Whether he was kind.”
Vincent’s chest tightened.
“And what did you tell her?”
Mrs. Alvarez folded another pastry packet.
“I said he could be.”
Could be.
Not was.
Vincent thought about every year he had known Dominic.
The man who brought soup when Vincent’s mother was sick.
The man who checked every exit before Vincent entered a room.
The man who had once spent three nights sleeping in a chair outside Vincent’s hospital room because doctors would not allow him inside.
People wanted character to be arithmetic.
Good deed plus good deed equals good man.
Bad deed cancels the sum.
Life was rarely that clean.
Vincent went to the study.
Dominic was still there, jacket off, tie loosened, staring at a glass of whiskey he had not touched.
“Where is she staying?” Vincent asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that too?”
Dominic looked up. “I stopped tracking her when she told me to.”
Vincent paused.
That, at least, sounded like growth.
Tiny and late.
But growth.
“Why did she come here?”
“I told you. She wouldn’t say.”
Vincent sat opposite him.
“Then tell me what she said eight months ago.”
Dominic’s eyes moved to the untouched whiskey.
“She said she had built a life in Milwaukee. She worked housekeeping at a hospital for a while, then a hotel. She got married at twenty-two.”
Vincent’s mouth tightened.
“Got?”
“Divorced.”
“Was he the one who hurt her?”
Dominic looked tired. “No.”
That answer surprised Vincent.
“The scars are older.”
“Yes.”
“Your father.”
“Mostly.”
Vincent waited.
Dominic swallowed.
“Our father had a man named Ray Koenig who stayed at the house sometimes. He was supposed to be muscle. Really he was somebody Angelo liked having around because he never told him no.”
Vincent remembered the name vaguely.
A thick-necked man with a broken front tooth.
Dead ten years now.
“Did Koenig hurt her?”
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“I walked in once.”
Vincent did not ask for details.
He did not need them.
“What did you do?”
“I hit him.”
“And then?”
“I left.”
Vincent stared.
“You left her there?”
“Our father came in. He put a gun on the table. I was nineteen by then. I thought if I stayed, one of us would die.”
“So you chose not you.”
Dominic looked up sharply.
Then, after a moment, nodded.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it hurt more than excuse would have.
Vincent sat back.
“Did Quinn know you hit Koenig?”
“Yes.”
“Did she know why you left?”
“I told her years later.”
“What did she say?”
Dominic’s mouth twisted.
“She said I kept explaining the part where I was scared as if she hadn’t been scared too.”
Vincent looked toward the dark window.
That sounded like Quinn.
He understood why she had come now.
Not to expose Dominic.
Not to destroy him.
To look at him in the life he had built after leaving her behind.
To see whether safety had made him better.
Vincent rubbed his jaw.
“Did you ever apologize without explaining?”
Dominic was silent.
That was answer enough.
The next morning Vincent found an envelope on his desk.
Mrs. Alvarez said Quinn had left it before walking out.
Inside was not a confession.
Not a threat.
Just a handwritten list of instructions for caring for the houseplants in the west sunroom.
At the bottom, beneath watering times and notes about winter light, Quinn had added one sentence.
Please don’t throw out the rosemary. It looks dead when it’s cold, but it isn’t.
Vincent read the line twice.
Then he called Dominic.
“Don’t contact her,” he said.
Dominic’s voice went flat. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
“What are you doing?”
Vincent looked at the rosemary through the open study door.
“Something neither of us is good at.”
“What?”
May you like
“Waiting until someone asks for us.”
