Chapter 5 - Angelo Russo Is Still Alive
Vincent had attended Angelo Russo’s funeral seven years ago.
At least, he thought he had.
There had been a casket.
There had been flowers.
There had been a priest who spoke too long about forgiveness.
Dominic had stood at the graveside with his face carved into nothing.
Now, in the diner, Dominic said, “He didn’t die.”
Vincent stared at him.
“You’re developing a very strange relationship with funerals.”
Dominic almost smiled.
Almost.
“His heart stopped twice after the stroke. The hospital called it. Then they got him back.”
“And you buried who?”
“No one.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed.
“It was a memorial. Closed casket because I told everybody he’d already been cremated.”
“Why?”
“Because Angelo couldn’t speak. Could barely move. I put him in a long-term care facility under our mother’s maiden name.”
Vincent stared at his friend for several seconds.
“That is insane.”
“It was easier.”
There was the family disease again.
Easier.
Dominic rubbed his forehead.
“He was dangerous when he was strong. When he became helpless, I didn’t know what to do with the fact that part of me still wanted him gone.”
“So you made him dead.”
“Yes.”
“And Quinn knows?”
“I told her today.”
Vincent swore quietly.
“What did she do?”
“She went completely still. Then she asked where.”
“Does she want to see him?”
“She said she thinks she does.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“Then you do not decide whether that’s a good idea.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Dominic looked exhausted. “I’m learning.”
For five days Quinn changed her mind every few hours. She told Denise she might need a personal day, then withdrew the request, then put it back in. She dreamed of Angelo strong, not sick. In the dream he stood in the kitchen doorway tapping his keys against his palm while thirteen-year-old Quinn tried to make herself smaller than the refrigerator.
The morning of the visit, she almost canceled. Instead she went to work, finished half a shift, then sat in the employee stairwell with her coat across her knees. Denise found her there and did not ask for the story.
“You want me to tell you what to do?” Denise asked.
“No.”
“Good. I wasn't going to.”
Quinn laughed despite herself.
“Whatever you decide, make sure it's because you chose it and not because somebody else finally made you feel guilty in the right direction.”
The visit happened five days later.
Quinn asked Vincent to drive but not come inside.
Dominic sat in the back seat.
No one spoke much during the forty-minute ride to the care facility outside Oak Park.
At one point Vincent glanced in the mirror and saw Quinn staring at Dominic’s hands.
The same hands that had once pulled her away from a broken window when she was eight.
The same hands that had later opened a door and left.
Family turned ordinary body parts into evidence.
At the facility, Quinn paused beside the entrance.
“You can still leave,” Vincent told her.
She looked at him.
“I know.”
Then she went inside.
Dominic followed only because she had asked him to.
Vincent waited in the car.
Forty minutes became an hour.
Then ninety minutes.
He did not call.
He did not send anyone in.
He waited.
When Quinn emerged, she looked pale but steady.
Dominic followed ten steps behind.
His face was gray.
Quinn got into the front seat.
Vincent started the car.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Do you want to go home?”
She looked out the window.
“I don’t know where that is today.”
So he drove without deciding for her.
After several blocks she said, “Coffee.”
They stopped at a small bakery.
Dominic stayed outside.
Inside, Quinn wrapped both hands around a paper cup.
“He recognized me,” she said.
Vincent said nothing.
“He can’t talk much. A few words. He said my name.”
Her mouth twisted.
“Then he cried.”
“Did that help?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“I thought maybe if he looked ruined enough, I’d feel better. I didn’t.”
Vincent understood that too.
Consequences were rarely shaped like satisfaction.
“What did you say to him?”
Quinn looked down at her coffee.
“I told him I remembered everything he told me to forget.”
Her thumb moved around the paper rim.
“I told him Dominic leaving did not make what he did smaller. I told him being sick now doesn’t make him safe in the past.”
Vincent nodded.
“Then he said he was sorry.”
Vincent waited.
Quinn laughed without humor.
“Two words. Fifteen years late. From a man who can barely speak. I spent half my life imagining the moment he apologized, and it turns out apologies don’t travel backward.”
“No.”
“They only tell you who the person is today.”
Vincent looked at her.
“That sounds like something you already knew.”
“Knowing is cheaper than feeling.”
They sat with that.
On the drive back, Quinn finally spoke to Dominic.
“I don’t want you paying for his care anymore.”
Dominic stiffened.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“He has no one else.”
“That’s not true. He has the state. He has the pension he never told us about. He has options.”
Dominic looked wounded. “You want me to abandon him?”
Quinn turned in her seat.
“No. I want you to stop using him as a punishment you give yourself and call loyalty.”
Vincent kept his eyes on the road.
Dominic said nothing for the rest of the ride.
When they reached Quinn’s apartment building, she opened the door and paused.
“Vincent.”
It was the first time she had used his first name.
He looked at her.
“Thank you for not going inside.”
He nodded.
She got out.
Dominic watched her disappear through the front entrance.
Then he leaned back and closed his eyes.
“She sees through everybody.”
Vincent started the car.
May you like
“No,” he said. “She’s just spent enough years around people hiding from themselves.”
