Chapter 13 - What Sebastian Said
St. Agnes sat on a narrow road bordered by old oaks and stone walls. My mother had chosen the cemetery because it was quiet.
She would have hated what we brought there that afternoon.
Police stayed out of sight beyond the lower drive. Reyes put a listening device under my shirt after explaining exactly what it was and exactly what not to do.
"Don't provoke him into a confession," she said. "Don't promise him anything. Don't threaten him. Just talk."
"You really take the fun out of everything."
"That's why I get a pension."
I walked alone toward the Romano family plot.
Sebastian was sitting on the low stone wall beside our mother's grave.
He wore the charcoal coat from that morning and held our father's watch in his left hand.
No visible gun.
That meant nothing.
He looked older than he had two days earlier.
"You came," he said.
"Yeah."
"Cops?"
"Nearby."
His mouth twisted.
"At least you're honest now."
"Trying something new."
I stopped six feet away.
"Tell me what happened."
Sebastian looked at the watch.
"You want the police version or the real one?"
"There should only be one."
He laughed softly.
"That's not how our family works."
I waited.
He rubbed his thumb across the scratched crystal.
"She called me Tuesday night after Claire hung up. She wanted me to promise I wouldn't tell you she was leaving."
"Did you?"
"No. I told her she was making a mistake."
"Why was that your decision?"
His eyes flashed.
"Because I knew what you were like after Dad died. I knew what happened when you felt abandoned."
I said nothing.
Our father died of a heart attack when I was twenty-six. For the next year, I slept four hours a night and treated grief like a management problem. Sebastian had covered meetings I forgot, paid bills I ignored, and once pulled a gun from my hand when I was drunk enough to use it on a man who insulted our father.
He had saved me from myself before.
That did not give him ownership of the rest of my life.
"Isabelle wasn't Dad," I said.
"No. She was worse."
My hands curled.
"Careful."
"You wanted the truth."
"I want what happened."
He looked toward the road.
"I drove to the preschool. I thought if I talked to her face-to-face, she'd calm down."
"You brought a gun."
"I always carried a gun. So did you."
"Don't spread this around."
His jaw tightened.
"Fine. I followed her. She got the girls out. I waited until the older two were near the entrance. I went over. She saw me and started yelling before I said anything."
"About what?"
"About control. About you. About me telling her she was humiliating the family."
He looked down.
"She said we were all sick."
"Was she wrong?"
His eyes lifted.
"You really are different."
"Keep going."
"She went back to the SUV because Nora was crying. Olivia and Sophie came back too. Isabelle told them to get inside. Then she told me she was leaving the next morning and if I tried to stop her, she'd go straight to the district attorney with everything she knew about us."
My stomach tightened.
"Did she mean it?"
"I don't know."
"What did you do?"
He stood.
"I grabbed her arm. She slapped me. I reached for her again. She saw the gun and grabbed my wrist."
He swallowed.
"The first shot went off between us."
"And the second?"
His face collapsed in a way I had never seen.
"She was on the ground. She reached for her phone."
The cemetery disappeared around me.
I heard only his voice.
"I thought she was calling you. Or police. I don't know. I panicked."
"You shot her again."
He looked at me.
"Yes."
My hands went numb.
Somewhere beyond the trees, a car passed on the road.
"Then you walked to my daughters."
"Olivia was screaming. Sophie wasn't making a sound. Nora was crying. I didn't know what to do."
"So you threatened them."
"I told them if they talked, bad men would take you away."
"You used me to scare them quiet."
"I was trying to keep them from seeing you arrested too."
I stared at him.
He believed part of that.
That was the horror of it.
Sebastian had not spent fourteen months thinking of himself as a monster. He had rearranged each decision until it became service.
Protect Dominic.
Protect the family.
Prevent humiliation.
Keep the girls from losing their father.
Every step made sense to him if the only thing that mattered was preserving the structure he called family.
"You came home," I said.
"Yes."
"Mrs. Donnelly washed your coat."
His mouth tightened.
"I changed clothes. Went to Queens. Made sure people saw me."
"Then you helped me pick targets."
He looked away.
"I needed you looking somewhere else."
"Frank Valenti."
"I knew he had nothing to do with it."
I took one step toward him.
He reached inside his coat.
I stopped.
His hand came out holding a pistol.
Behind the stone wall, my mother's name was carved into granite.
"Seb," I said.
"Don't."
The gun pointed toward the ground, not at me.
"Put it down."
"You think they're going to let me explain any of this?"
"You just did."
His eyes filled.
"I loved you."
"I know."
"I did everything for you."
"I know."
"Then how can you stand there and hand me to them?"
I thought of Olivia asking why I always believed him.
I thought of Nora saying Daddy into a phone.
I thought of Isabelle packing a purple sweater because she still believed I might visit on weekends.
"Because love doesn't make this mine to hide."
Sebastian's face twisted.
The gun rose.
Not toward me.
Toward his own chest.
I moved before I thought.
I caught his wrist with both hands and drove it upward. The shot cracked into the branches above us.
Then police were everywhere.
Voices. Footsteps. Commands.
Sebastian fought me for half a second.
Then he stopped.
He looked at me while Reyes pulled me back and officers forced him to the ground.
"You chose them," he said.
I was breathing too hard to answer.
May you like
He gave a broken smile against the grass.
"Finally."
