Chương 4
“How much?” he asked.
Clara stared at him. “For what?”
“Tonight.”
“I’m a waitress. The restaurant pays me.”
“You left your shift.”
“Because your son needed help.”
“That usually has a price.”
“Maybe where you live.”
Dante looked away, either to hide irritation or amusement.
Ricardo took a black card from his pocket. It had no company name, only a phone number embossed in silver.
“Come tomorrow at nine.”
“No.”
His hand remained extended.
“I’m not a nanny,” Clara said.
“You calmed him.”
“He was exhausted.”
“He said your name.”
“He heard someone say it.”
“He does not say the names of people he has known for years.”
Sarah stepped forward. “Ricardo, she said no.”
He ignored her. “One week.”
Clara thought of the empty chair downstairs.
“What happens after one week?”
“I’ll decide.”
“That’s exactly why I’m saying no.”
Ricardo’s stare narrowed.
Clara took the card only so she could place it on a console table between them.
“You need a child therapist,” she said. “Someone trained in grief. And you need to tell him the truth about his mother.”
She walked toward the elevator.
Dante stepped into her path.
For one second, Clara’s pulse became a roar in her ears.
Ricardo said, “Move.”
Dante moved.
Sarah followed Clara into the elevator. “I’ll take you home.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“It is in my family.”
The doors closed before Clara could answer.
Sarah watched the numbers descend. “My brother has been called many things. Patient is not one of them.”
“He was patient with Leo.”
“He was confused.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” Sarah opened her clutch and removed a folded handkerchief. She twisted it once, then put it back without using it. “It may be the closest he knows how to come.”
“Is Elena alive?”
Sarah stared at the elevator doors.
“Yes.”
Clara felt relief first. Then anger followed so quickly it made her dizzy.
“Does Leo know?”
“He knows what a three-year-old can know when every adult around him changes the subject.”
“Where is she?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
The elevator opened onto the lobby.
Sarah touched Clara’s arm before she stepped out. “You should forget tonight.”
Clara looked at her.
“That sounds like advice,” Clara said.
“It is.”
“From a woman who set a place at the table for someone she knows is alive?”
Sarah’s hand fell away.
Outside, the city had begun to absorb the scene at the restaurant into its endless appetite. Two photographers waited near the building entrance. Sarah’s driver walked Clara to the car while security blocked the lenses.
Tom called before they reached her apartment.
“Tell me you’re not dead.”
“I’m not dead.”
“Where are you?”
“Almost home.”
“Who is Moretti?”
Clara looked through the window at wet pavement reflecting traffic lights. “Someone you don’t want to know.”
“Then why were you in his car?”
“There was a child.”
Tom was silent.
He knew those four words could still override every useful instinct she possessed.
“Clara.”
“I’m okay.”
“You said that in the hospital.”
The driver’s eyes lifted to the rearview mirror. Clara turned toward the window.
“I have to go.”
“Don’t hang up.”
“I’m home.”
She ended the call as the car stopped.
Her apartment sat above a laundromat on West Eighty-Ninth Street. The radiator clanged too loudly. The kitchen drawer beneath the stove stuck halfway unless she lifted it. Owen’s yellow rain boots still occupied the back of the hall closet because she had not found a way to throw away footwear shaped by a dead child’s feet.
She locked the door and leaned against it.
Her phone showed eleven missed calls from the restaurant.
The twelfth arrived while she was taking off her shoes.
Her manager, Julian Cross, did not ask whether she was safe.
“Do you understand what you did?”
“I stopped a three-year-old from getting hurt.”
“You put your hands on the child of our most important guest.”
“He reached for me.”
“You shouted at Ricardo Moretti.”
“He was sitting beside a gun.”
“Lower your voice.”
“I’m alone.”
“Lower it anyway.”
Clara walked into the kitchen. On the refrigerator, beneath a magnet from a beach trip she and Tom had taken before Owen was born, hung a notice about increased rent.
Julian exhaled. “The clip has two hundred thousand views.”
“What clip?”
“Someone filmed through the front window. You can’t hear everything, but you can hear enough.”
Clara closed her eyes.
“The owners are furious,” he continued. “Mr. Moretti has not complained, which is making them more nervous.”
“Did anyone ask how Leo is?”
“This is not a daycare, Clara.”
“He’s three.”
“You left the floor for almost two hours.”
“Fire me, then.”
Julian went quiet.
She wished she had not said it. Rent was due in six days. Her savings had thinned after Owen’s funeral, the divorce, the move, and the months when getting out of bed had counted as full-time work.
Julian cleared his throat. “Come in tomorrow before lunch. We’ll discuss it.”
“That means I’m fired.”
“It means come in tomorrow.”
He hung up.
Clara placed the phone on the counter and opened the sticking drawer. Inside lay a collection of things she had failed to decide about: batteries, takeout menus, two birthday candles, a little plastic dinosaur, and a paper hospital bracelet with Owen Bennett printed in fading blue letters.
She shut the drawer too hard.
At eight the next morning, reporters were outside the restaurant.
By eight-fifteen, one had found Clara’s building.
She watched from behind the curtain as a woman in a red coat asked the laundromat owner whether the grieving waitress who challenged an alleged crime boss lived upstairs. The phrase had already become a headline.
At nine, someone knocked.
Clara did not move.
The knock came again, measured and patient.
“Ms. Bennett,” Dante called through the door. “I’m alone.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
May you like
“I understand.”
She looked through the peephole. Dante stood in the narrow hall holding a paper bag and no visible weapon. His black suit made the peeling wallpaper look worse.
