Chương 3
Elena dialed her father’s number from memory.
It rang once.
Twice.
On the third ring, somebody answered.
No one spoke.
“Dad?”
Teresa’s face changed.
Not much, but enough.
Elena heard a man breathe on the other end, then a soft metallic sound, like something being set carefully on a table.
“Dad, it’s me.”
The line went dead.
The elevator chimed.
Teresa took the phone from Elena, ended the call, and looked toward the opening doors.
Three men stepped into the corridor.
The one in front was Anthony Renda.
He was no longer pretending to be polite.
Teresa opened her umbrella despite the dry hospital floor, hooked its curved handle over her forearm, and placed herself between Elena and the approaching men.
“Go back to your brother,” she said.
Elena did not move.
“Where’s my father?”
Anthony reached inside his jacket.
Teresa’s hand closed around Elena’s wrist.
“Now,” she said, and for the first time that night, Elena heard fear in her grandmother’s voice.
Teresa pulled Elena behind the nurses’ station just as Anthony’s hand came out of his jacket holding not a gun but a black leather wallet.
He flipped it open toward the security guard, and Elena caught the silver flash of a badge before Teresa shoved open a swinging door marked STAFF ONLY.
“What the hell is happening?”
“Move.”
“You said he worked for somebody.”
“He does.”
“You made him sound like a hit man.”
“I said he was looking for something.”
Teresa caught the elbow of a startled nurse carrying a plastic basin and pointed toward the treatment rooms.
“My grandson is in twelve, and three men who have no business near him just came off that elevator.”
The nurse stared at her.
“You can’t be back here.”
“Then call security.”
“We have security.”
Teresa glanced through the narrow window in the swinging door.
“Yes, I noticed.”
Elena pulled free of her grandmother’s grip.
“Was that a police badge?”
“No.”
“You saw it.”
“I saw something designed to make people stop asking questions.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
The admission landed differently the second time.
Elena had spent years imagining Teresa as the fixed point around which every ugly family story revolved, the woman who always knew who owed what, who had lied, who would come through which door.
Now Teresa kept checking the corridor behind them.
A hospital employee pushed a linen cart around the corner and nearly collided with them.
He swore under his breath, recognized neither woman, and told them to get out of the way.
Teresa apologized.
The ordinary courtesy unsettled Elena more than shouting would have.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere with another exit.”
“I’m not leaving Nico.”
“I told you we aren’t.”
They reached a service corridor that smelled of bleach and overheated laundry.
Teresa stopped beside a locked supply room and took out her own phone.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
“Who are you calling?”
“Someone who owes me a favor.”
“You still collect those?”
Teresa looked at her.
“People prefer calling them friendships until they need one.”
She made the call.
A man answered after several rings.
Teresa said, “Sal, I need two people at St. Vincent’s, fourth floor, immediately.”
She listened.
“No weapons inside the hospital.”
Another pause.
“I’m aware of the hour.”
She hung up.
Elena folded her arms.
“Who’s Sal?”
“A florist.”
“At three in the morning.”
“He has insomnia.”
“Of course he does.”
For a moment, something almost human passed between them, the ghost of the way they had once spoken before Elena learned that every harmless thing in Teresa’s world could have a second meaning.
Then Elena remembered the unanswered phone call.
“My father.”
Teresa’s expression closed again.
“We need to determine where he is.”
“He lives fifteen minutes away.”
“And if whoever answered his phone is waiting there?”
“I’m going anyway.”
“No.”
“You don’t get a vote.”
“I get one when you’re about to walk into a situation you don’t understand.”
Elena laughed once, without humor.
“That sentence could be the Vassallo family crest.”
Teresa accepted the insult without blinking.
A door opened farther down the corridor, and both women turned.
A resident in blue scrubs came through eating crackers from a vending-machine packet.
He looked at them, looked at the STAFF ONLY sign behind them, decided this was someone else’s problem, and kept walking.
Elena watched him disappear around the corner.
“What was my name doing in Nico’s ledger?”
Teresa’s eyes sharpened.
“He told you that?”
“He said yours was there too.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That he found accounts that weren’t accounts.”
“Anything else?”
“He was barely conscious.”
“Did he say where the ledger is?”
“No.”
Teresa’s shoulders lowered by perhaps half an inch.
Elena saw it.
“You’re relieved.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re relieved he didn’t tell me.”
“I’m relieved he didn’t say more while medicated in a room people can enter.”
“You know what the ledger is.”
“I have an idea.”
“Tell me.”
“Not until I know whether I’m right.”
“You vanished from our lives because Dad told us you were dangerous, and now Nico gets beaten half to death, my father disappears, men steal my phone, and you still think you get to ration information.”
Teresa’s face changed at the word vanished.
“I did not vanish.”
“You stopped calling.”
“Your father obtained a restraining order.”
Elena stared at her.
“What?”
Teresa looked away first.
It was such an unfamiliar victory that Elena almost missed its meaning.
“My father never had a restraining order against you.”
“He did.”
“I would know.”
“You were nineteen.”
“I lived with him.”
“And he told you what he wanted you to know.”
Elena stepped closer.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
The fluorescent lights hummed above them.
Somewhere beyond the wall, a machine began beeping and a woman called for a respiratory therapist.
The hospital continued around them with the indifferent urgency of a place where everybody’s worst night competed for floor space.
May you like
“Why?” Elena asked.
Teresa rubbed her thumb along the curved handle of her umbrella.
