Chương 3
Sophia’s answer came sharp enough to stop him.
“He was across the street.”
Dominic leaned back.
“Tell me.”
Sophia stared at the watch instead of him.
“I picked Lily up late because Mrs. DeMarco called out and I had to cover the linen inventory.”
Dominic knew the day immediately.
He had complained that three guest rooms were still missing fresh towels.
The memory made him feel briefly ill.
“Sonia stayed with Lily until I got there,” Sophia continued.
“We came out the side entrance, and Lily suddenly stopped walking.”
“What did she do?”
“She pointed.”
Sophia swallowed.
“She said, ‘That man knows Daddy.’”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“What man?”
“I looked across the street.”
“And?”
“There was a man beside a dark SUV.”
“Did you see his face?”
“Not well.”
“Age?”
“Fifties, maybe.”
“Height?”
“A little taller than you.”
“Hair?”
“Gray at the temples.”
Dominic’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“Peppermint?”
Sophia looked up.
“What?”
“Did you smell peppermint?”
“He was across the street.”
Dominic ignored the answer.
“What happened next?”
“I asked Lily what she meant.”
Sophia’s voice became quieter.
“She said he had been at Daddy’s garage.”
Dominic frowned.
“Michael had a garage?”
“At our old apartment building.”
“You never told me that.”
“You never asked about my husband’s hobbies.”
The rebuke landed cleanly.
Dominic let it.
Sophia continued.
“Michael rented one of the detached garages behind the building.”
“For electrical work?”
“That’s what he told me.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“Not by the end.”
The refrigerator clicked on behind them.
Sophia looked toward it as though the ordinary sound had given her somewhere safer to put her attention.
“Michael started coming home late after Lily was born,” she said.
“He’d shower before he touched her.”
Dominic said nothing.
“He always smelled like metal and dust from work, so at first I thought nothing of it.”
Sophia’s fingers curled.
“Then I started finding things in his pockets.”
“What things?”
“Receipts from places he said he hadn’t been.”
“Where?”
“Queens.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Anything else?”
“A storage locker key.”
“Address?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t check?”
“I was nursing a newborn, sleeping two hours at a time, and trying to decide whether my husband was cheating on me.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“I wasn’t conducting an investigation.”
Dominic looked away.
“Did you confront him?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He said the work was temporary.”
“What work?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Did he mention my family?”
“Never.”
“Peter Vale?”
“No.”
“Daniel Moretti?”
“No.”
Dominic tapped one finger beside the watch.
“Describe the man at the preschool again.”
Sophia did.
When she finished, Dominic reached for his phone.
He stopped before unlocking it.
“You said Lily recognized him.”
“She did.”
“From Michael’s garage.”
“Yes.”
“How would a three-year-old remember someone she saw before her father died?”
Sophia’s face hardened.
“She was almost two when Michael died.”
“That’s young.”
“I know how old my daughter was.”
“You said she remembered him.”
“She remembers strange things.”
Sophia folded her arms.
“Songs she heard once.”
“Faces?”
“Sometimes.”
Dominic studied her.
“What are you leaving out?”
Sophia’s expression changed.
Not guilt.
Resignation.
She stood and walked to the cabinet above the microwave.
From behind a stack of paper napkins, she removed a small plastic container.
Dominic watched her set it on the table.
Inside were two crayons, a grocery receipt, three hair ties, and a folded piece of paper.
“What is that?”
“Lily drew this after preschool.”
Sophia unfolded the paper.
The drawing was what Dominic expected from a three-year-old.
Purple loops.
A green shape that might have been a tree.
Three stick figures.
One was much taller than the others.
Beside it was a small rectangle colored silver.
Dominic looked at Sophia.
“She said it was his box,” Sophia whispered.
Dominic’s chest tightened.
“The mint tin.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“But she saw him with it.”
“She said the man clicked it.”
Dominic pushed back from the table.
“When?”
“At the garage.”
He stood.
“Sophia, I need you to think carefully.”
“I have been.”
“No.”
His voice remained controlled.
“You have been trying to survive this conversation.”
She flinched.
“I need you to think about Michael.”
“I think about Michael every day.”
“Think about what he was doing before he died.”
Her eyes flashed.
“You don’t get to order me into my husband’s last weeks like it’s a file drawer.”
Dominic stopped.
The words hung between them.
Sophia pressed both hands flat against the table.
Her eyes had turned wet, but no tears fell.
“I spent a year wondering whether I had missed something that could have saved him,” she said.
“Then another year being angry at him for leaving me with questions.”
Dominic lowered his gaze.
“And after that?”
“I got tired.”
She laughed once without humor.
“That’s the part nobody tells you about grief.”
Dominic did not move.
“Eventually you get tired of interrogating a dead person.”
For the first time that night, he saw something in Sophia that resembled the exhaustion he had carried since burying Elena.
Not the same grief.
No grief was the same.
But the same ugly fatigue lived underneath it.
He sat again.
“I’m sorry.”
Sophia looked suspicious of the apology.
Dominic almost smiled.
“Don’t make me repeat it.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
She sat opposite him.
For several seconds they listened to the refrigerator hum.
Then Sophia touched the corner of Lily’s drawing.
“Michael had a second phone.”
Dominic looked up.
“When did you find it?”
“After the funeral.”
“Where?”
“In the garage.”
“Do you still have it?”
Sophia shook her head.
“It was destroyed.”
“How?”
“Smashed.”
“By you?”
“No.”
Dominic went still.
“When I went to clear the garage, the lock was broken.”
She rubbed her thumb along the paper.
“The place had been searched.”
“Police?”
“They said no.”
“What was missing?”
“I don’t know what had been there.”
“What remained?”
“Tools.”
“Anything unusual?”
Sophia hesitated.
“A metal lockbox.”
Dominic’s pulse climbed.
“What was inside?”
“Nothing.”
“Where is it?”
May you like
“I threw it away.”
He stared at her.
