Chapter 1 - The Window Seat
She had rolled her eyes at me then.
"Dominic, you plan for enemies you haven't met yet. Let me plan for children we haven't met yet."
I remembered the way she had said it because Olivia was climbing into that same window seat now.
She pushed aside a faded velvet cushion and reached into the narrow space between the cushion and the carved wood. Her fingers came out with a photograph bent along one corner.
It was not one of Isabelle's framed portraits. It was an ordinary snapshot from a summer barbecue at the house, taken three years earlier. Isabelle sat on the stone wall by the pool with Nora asleep against her chest. I stood behind her with one hand on Olivia's shoulder. Sophie was making a face at the camera.
And beside me, smiling as if he belonged there as completely as I did, stood my younger brother.
Sebastian.
Sophie touched his face in the photograph.
Her fingernail trembled against the glossy paper.
"Him," she whispered.
Grace did not move.
I did not breathe.
Sophie swallowed.
"Mommy said his name."
I crouched in front of her, but I stopped myself before I reached for her. Every instinct I had told me to demand the whole story. Who? Where? What did you see? Why didn't you tell me?
That was how I handled men who lied to me.
My daughter was not one of my men.
"Okay," I said.
The word felt useless.
Sophie stared at the floor.
Olivia took the photograph from her and held it against her chest.
Nora had backed herself into the corner of the window seat. Her thumb was pressed hard against her lower lip.
Grace finally looked at me.
"Don't ask them all at once."
I almost snapped at her. I could feel the response gathering in my throat simply because she had told me what not to do in my own house.
Then I looked at Nora.
I let the anger die where it was.
"I'm not going to," I said.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.
All three girls reacted.
Not dramatically. That was worse.
Olivia's shoulders rose. Sophie stepped backward. Nora slid off the seat and moved behind Grace again.
A moment later Sebastian appeared in the library doorway.
He was thirty-eight, three years younger than me, and had the kind of face people trusted too quickly. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A Roman nose he hated as a teenager and had grown into as an adult. He wore a navy sweater and gray slacks, nothing that suggested the man had spent most of his life negotiating with people who sometimes disappeared afterward.
He smiled when he saw the girls.
"There you are. Mrs. Donnelly said—"
He stopped when he saw me holding the photograph.
Only for half a second.
I had built my life noticing half seconds.
"Dom," he said. "Thought you were in Brooklyn until tonight."
"Plans changed."
His eyes moved to Grace.
Then to Sophie.
Then back to me.
"Everything all right?"
Nora's fingers closed around the back of Grace's skirt.
Sebastian noticed that too.
"Fine," I said.
It was the lie he wanted, so I watched how he received it.
His shoulders loosened.
Not much.
Enough.
I handed the photograph to Olivia.
"Why don't you girls go upstairs with Grace?"
Olivia looked at me for several seconds. Her eyes were Isabelle's, green with tiny brown flecks near the center. When she had been a baby, Isabelle used to insist that made her impossible to lie to.
Olivia slipped her hand into Sophie's.
They left without speaking.
Nora stayed behind Grace until they were nearly through the doorway. Then she looked back at Sebastian.
Her face changed.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition wrapped in fear.
Sebastian waited until their footsteps faded.
"What was that about?"
I walked to the bar cart and poured water into a glass. My hand was steady because I had trained it to be steady under worse circumstances.
My thoughts were not.
Sebastian had been in this house almost every day since Isabelle died.
The first week, he slept in the guest room outside the nursery because I did not. I had spent those nights moving between police stations, funeral arrangements, warehouses, and the homes of men I believed responsible.
He was the one who sat outside Olivia's bedroom when she woke shaking.
He was the one who carried Nora at the cemetery because I could not feel my own arms.
He was the one who told me, over and over, that I had to stay focused.
Find who did this.
Make sure it never happens again.
I looked at him over the rim of the glass.
"Do you remember that barbecue?"
He glanced toward the picture in Olivia's hand as she disappeared around the far end of the hall.
"Three summers ago? Sure."
"Isabelle made too much food."
"Isabelle always made too much food."
He smiled.
I hated him for smiling.
Then I hated myself because I did not yet know whether I had the right.
"She and I fought that night," I said.
His expression sharpened. "You two fought plenty."
"About the girls."
"You fought about work."
He corrected me too quickly.
I set down the water.
"Same thing, according to her."
Sebastian gave a soft sigh, the kind he used when he wanted to make me feel unreasonable without saying the word.
"Dom, if this is about you getting stuck in your head again—"
"It's about dinner."
He blinked.
"Dinner?"
"Stay. Seven o'clock."
"I live here half the week. Where else would I eat?"
That was true now. Six months after Isabelle's death, Sebastian had given up his apartment in Manhattan and moved into the west wing. He said the girls needed family. I had been grateful enough not to ask how long he intended to stay.
"Seven," I repeated.
He studied me.
"Sure."
He left the library without asking why I had come home early again.
That bothered me more than it should have.
I waited thirty seconds before going upstairs.
Grace had taken the girls to the old schoolroom at the back of the second floor. Isabelle had turned it into an art room when Olivia started preschool. Crayons stood in glass jars by color. Paper covered half the floor. Someone had left three bowls of flour on a low table beside a mess of wooden spoons.
The girls were silent again.
The song was gone as if I had imagined it.
Grace was on her knees wiping flour from Nora's cheek.
I stood at the door.
"How did you get them to sing?"
Grace looked at Olivia before answering.
"I didn't."
"I heard them."
"I mean I didn't get them to do anything."
Her tone was careful now, but not submissive.
"They were helping me make biscuits. Nora started humming. Sophie joined her. Olivia knew the words. I sang badly enough that they laughed at me."
Nora's mouth twitched.
Grace noticed but did not make a celebration out of it.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
I looked at my daughters.
Fourteen months of doctors, travel, specialists, money, schedules, reward charts, careful voices, and desperate bargaining.
Biscuits.
A bad singing voice.
No demand.
I lowered myself into a child-size chair that put my knees almost level with my shoulders.
Olivia looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
"I'm not going to ask you what happened," I said. "Not tonight."
Sophie stared at a blue crayon.
"But I heard you. And I believe you."
Her fingers stopped moving.
I stayed in that ridiculous chair until my legs went numb.
Nobody spoke.
When the hallway clock chimed six thirty, Olivia got up, walked to the door, and looked down the corridor toward the west wing.
Then she came back and placed the photograph face down on the table.
May you like
Under it, written in a child's uneven block letters, were three words I had not seen before.
HE SAW US.
