Chương 2
He had seen the watch hundreds of times.
Tonight something about it bothered him.
"Where did you get that?"
Ethan followed his gaze.
"My watch?"
"Yes."
"You gave it to me."
Dominic frowned.
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did."
"When?"
"My birthday."
"Today?"
"Last year."
Dominic reached for it.
The watch was too small for an adult, with a narrow gold bracelet and an old-fashioned cream face.
He turned it over.
Three initials had been engraved on the back.
D.A.M.
His fingers went still.
Ethan noticed.
"What's wrong?"
Dominic did not answer.
He had not seen those initials in seven years.
Daniel Anthony Moretti had been his father.
The watch had belonged to him.
Dominic had watched it disappear into an evidence envelope after Daniel Moretti was murdered in a parking garage in Queens.
It had never been returned to the family.
"Who told you I gave you this?"
Ethan's face changed.
Nobody needed to teach children when an innocent answer had accidentally become dangerous.
"I don't remember."
"Ethan."
"A man."
"What man?"
"At school."
Dominic's hand closed around the watch.
Dr. Harris stopped packing.
"When?"
"Last year."
"Tell me exactly what happened."
Ethan looked toward the door.
"Can Lily come back?"
Dominic felt a pulse beating hard behind his eyes.
"Tomorrow."
"You promise?"
"Yes."
Ethan took a breath.
"He said he knew Mom."
Dominic did not move.
Ethan's mother had been dead since his son was eleven months old.
"He said she wanted me to have it when I was old enough."
"What did he look like?"
"I don't know."
"You talked to him."
"It was a year ago."
Dominic forced his voice lower.
"Anything you remember."
"He was old."
"How old?"
"Like you."
Dr. Harris turned away, hiding a smile that lasted less than a second.
Dominic ignored him.
"Hair?"
"Gray on the sides."
"Accent?"
Ethan shrugged.
"He smelled weird."
"Like what?"
The boy frowned with concentration.
"Peppermint."
Dominic's grip loosened.
There were memories a man could bury beneath years of work, violence, money, funerals, and sleepless nights.
Smell ignored all of that.
Peppermint had filled the Moretti kitchen every Sunday when Dominic was a boy because his father carried a silver tin of mints in his jacket and clicked it open whenever he was trying not to smoke.
Daniel had given those same mints to one other man.
His accountant, Peter Vale.
Peter had supposedly died six months before Daniel.
Dominic stood.
"Try to sleep."
"Dad?"
"You look mad."
"I'm thinking."
"That's your mad face."
Dominic touched his son's hair.
"Sleep."
He carried the watch downstairs in his closed hand.
Sophia's door opened before he reached the end of the staff corridor.
She had changed out of her uniform and wore gray sweatpants and an old college sweatshirt.
Without the black dress and pinned hair, she looked less like part of the estate and more like what she was, a tired thirty-one-year-old mother who had been awake since before dawn.
"She's sleeping," Sophia whispered.
"I need to ask you something."
"About what she saw?"
Dominic opened his hand.
Sophia stared at the gold watch.
The color drained from her face.
Dominic saw it happen.
"You recognize this."
Sophia said nothing.
"Sophia."
She stepped backward.
Her hand found the edge of the door.
"Where did you get that?"
"It belongs to Ethan."
"No."
Her answer came too quickly.
Dominic's voice cooled.
"You just told me you recognize it."
"I said no such thing."
"You didn't have to."
Sophia looked toward the bedroom behind her.
Dominic understood the gesture.
Whatever she knew, she did not want the conversation near Lily.
They walked to the small staff kitchen.
Sophia shut the door.
Dominic placed the watch on the table between them.
For a long moment, she would not touch it.
Then she turned it over with one finger.
Her breathing changed when she saw the initials.
"I've seen this before," she said.
"Where?"
Sophia stared at the engraved letters.
"My husband had it."
Dominic's chair scraped backward.
Sophia flinched.
"Your husband was an electrician."
"That's what you knew about him."
"Michael Carter worked commercial electrical jobs in Yonkers."
"Mostly."
"Mostly?"
Sophia closed her eyes briefly.
"Before Lily was born, Michael did contract work for people who paid cash."
"What people?"
"He never gave me names."
Dominic leaned across the table.
"Your dead husband had my murdered father's watch."
Sophia's eyes snapped up.
"I didn't know whose it was."
"How did he get it?"
"I don't know."
"Try again."
"I don't know."
The silence between them hardened.
Then Sophia reached for the watch.
Dominic caught her wrist before she touched it.
She stared at his hand until he released her.
"Don't ever do that again," she said.
Dominic sat back.
She rubbed her wrist although he had barely squeezed it.
"I found it in Michael's work jacket three days before he died," she said.
"Why do you remember it?"
"Because we fought about it."
"Why?"
"Because Michael couldn't afford a gold watch."
Her mouth twisted.
"We couldn't afford decent tires."
Dominic waited.
Sophia looked down at the tiny watch.
"He told me it belonged to a client."
"Which client?"
"He wouldn't say."
"And then?"
"The next morning it was gone."
"Michael died two days later?"
"Three."
"Car accident."
"That's what the police report said."
Dominic looked at the initials again.
Sophia folded her arms tightly across herself.
"What aren't you telling me?"
He asked it softly.
That frightened her more than anger would have.
She glanced toward the hallway.
"Lily didn't just see the man tonight."
Dominic's body went still.
Sophia swallowed.
"She recognized him."
Dominic watched Sophia’s face and understood that whatever came next had been waiting behind her teeth for a long time.
“Where?”
Sophia rubbed her palms against the thighs of her sweatpants.
“Outside St. Agnes.”
“The preschool?”
She nodded.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“And you said nothing.”
“I didn’t know it mattered.”
May you like
“Someone approached your daughter and you didn’t know it mattered?”
“He didn’t approach her.”
