Chapter 7 - The Parking Lot
Sebastian left without another word.
I watched his taillights disappear beyond the gate.
Only then did I realize Olivia was crying.
No sound.
Just tears.
I climbed the stairs slowly and stopped two steps below her.
"You don't have to tell me anything tonight."
She wiped her face with both hands.
"He lies."
The words came out rough, as if her throat had forgotten how to make them.
"Okay."
"You always believe him."
That one hit harder.
I sat on the step.
"I did."
She stared down at me.
"Why?"
There were a hundred answers.
Because he was my brother.
Because we grew up in a house where loyalty mattered more than truth.
Because when our father died, Sebastian stood beside me while men twice our age waited to see if the Romano organization would split.
Because he had taken a knife for me at nineteen.
Because he made my daughters pancakes after their mother died.
Because admitting I did not know him meant admitting I did not know the house I had built.
"Because I wanted to," I said.
Olivia looked at me for several seconds.
Then she sat three steps above me.
"Mommy was mad at him."
I did not ask when.
She continued anyway.
"In the car. Before school. She said we were going to Aunt Claire's tomorrow. Sophie asked if you were coming. Mommy said later."
Her breath hitched.
Grace appeared at the top of the stairs but did not interrupt.
"Then Uncle Seb's car came."
"Do you remember what kind?"
Grace shook her head at me.
I stopped.
Too specific.
Olivia curled her fingers around the banister spindle.
"Mommy told us to stay in the car."
She squeezed her eyes shut.
"She got out. He yelled. Mommy yelled. Nora was crying because she dropped Bunny."
The stuffed rabbit.
I looked at Grace.
She held it now against her chest.
"Then Mommy opened the back door and said get down."
Olivia's breathing quickened.
I kept my voice low.
"You can stop."
She shook her head hard.
"There was a pop."
One tear fell from her chin to her pajama sleeve.
"Then another."
I could not feel my hands.
"Uncle Seb came to the window."
Grace covered her mouth.
Olivia looked directly at me.
"He said if we told, you'd go away too."
The house became impossibly quiet.
Not because no one made a sound.
Because every sound suddenly had edges.
The heating vent.
The old clock downstairs.
Nora murmuring in her sleep.
My own breath.
"What exactly did he say?" I asked.
Grace moved one step forward.
"Dominic."
I closed my eyes.
"You're right. Sorry."
Olivia stared at me.
"He said bad people would take you."
That was enough.
Too much.
I remembered the morning at the hospital when an officer had asked whether Olivia might have seen the shooter. I had looked at my daughter curled beneath a gray blanket and answered for her. She saw nothing, I'd said. She was inside the car.
The officer had tried again.
I told him to leave.
At the time, I had thought I was shielding her from one more terrible adult question. I could see now how easily protection became a locked door when the person holding the key refused to listen.
Olivia had been carrying an answer while I was busy supplying one.
I stood and walked into the bathroom at the end of the hall.
I shut the door.
Then I leaned over the sink and vomited.
I had seen dead men.
I had ordered violence.
I had stood in emergency rooms with blood on my shirt and gone back to meetings the same night.
Nothing had prepared me for the image of my six-year-old daughter crouched on the floor of an SUV while my brother leaned toward the glass and taught her silence.
I washed my face.
When I opened the door, Grace was waiting.
"She's asleep on the stairs," she said.
I looked past her.
Olivia had curled against the wall with her head on the carpet.
I lifted her carefully.
She did not wake.
In Isabelle's room, Sophie and Nora were already asleep across the bed. I laid Olivia beside them.
Grace pulled the blanket over all three.
"Reyes needs to know," she whispered.
"I know."
"Tonight."
I called from the hallway.
Reyes arrived forty minutes later with another detective and no lights or sirens.
She did not wake the girls.
She listened to what Grace and I reported, then became visibly annoyed when I admitted I had asked Olivia about the car.
"One question," I said.
"One can become ten when you're scared."
"I stopped."
"Good. Keep stopping."
She took notes.
"Where's Sebastian?"
"Garden City Hotel."
"How do you know?"
"He texted Mrs. Donnelly."
"Don't send anybody after him."
"I won't."
Reyes gave me a flat look.
"That sounded painful again."
"It is getting easier."
"Progress."
She stood.
"We'll ask him to come in tomorrow. We still need evidence. A child's disclosure matters, but defense counsel will attack timing, trauma, family influence, everything. We do this carefully."
"What if he runs?"
"Then we deal with that."
"What if he comes back?"
"Call us."
I almost said, This is my house.
The sentence rose and died.
"Fine."
After Reyes left, I went to the kitchen.
Mrs. Donnelly was there alone, wiping an already-clean counter.
She wiped it once.
Then again.
Then a third time.
"Stop," I said.
Her hand froze.
"Stop cleaning."
She set the cloth down.
I thought of every morning after Isabelle's death when she had moved through the house polishing silver and straightening cushions while the rest of us broke apart.
"What do you know?"
Her eyes filled immediately.
That frightened me more than denial would have.
"Mrs. Donnelly."
May you like
She pulled out a chair and sat.
"I washed his coat," she said.
