Chương 5
“What are they looking for?” she asked.
Rafe’s attention shifted to Bear’s empty place on the blanket.
Mave saw it.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You looked at my son’s toy.”
“Jamie gave it to him?”
“It was in the hospital gift shop. Finn was four days old.”
“Did Jamie ever hide documents with you?”
“He hid parking tickets.”
“Keys?”
“No.”
“Numbers, names, storage receipts?”
“I was nineteen. My child was in intensive care. Jamie worked nights and came home smelling like diesel. We weren’t exchanging coded messages.”
The anger cost her. She coughed, and pain tore beneath her ribs. Rafe moved instinctively. She raised her hand.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
The nurse returned and ended the conversation.
For the next hour, Mave listened to the oxygen machine and remembered the final week of Jamie’s life.
Not as a sequence. Memory did not behave that way. It returned in pieces.
His thumbnail split down the middle.
A grocery bag containing oranges, though neither of them liked oranges.
The way he checked the apartment window twice before bed.
A bruise on his left wrist.
Bear’s torn ear, newly stitched with dark-green thread because that was the only spool Mave owned.
Jamie kneeling beside Finn’s crib, whispering something into the bear’s damaged head.
At the time, she had assumed he was apologizing for being late.
Mave opened her eyes.
Rafe remained in the chair near the window.
“Where is Finn?”
“With Elena and Mrs. Keating. Detective Ortiz has an officer outside the lounge.”
“Bring me the bear.”
Rafe studied her face, then left without asking why.
Bear’s left ear had been repaired so many times that the stitches formed a hard ridge beneath the fabric. Mave had sewn over Jamie’s original thread twice. Sitting upright made her dizzy, but she refused to lie back.
Detective Ortiz wore gloves. She photographed the toy from every angle before touching the seam.
Finn stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. “You’re hurting him.”
“I’m going to open one stitch,” Ortiz said.
“That’s how it starts.”
Mave held out her hand. “Come here.”
He stayed where he was.
Rafe stood behind him. Elena knelt beside the vending machine, clutching a cup of hot chocolate Finn had declined.
Ortiz cut the newest thread. Beneath it lay Mave’s second repair, then the faded dark-green line Jamie had sewn seven years earlier. She opened less than an inch.
Something hard pressed against the tip of her tweezers.
Finn made a small sound.
Ortiz drew out a brass key wrapped in waxed paper. A number was stamped along the side.
Mave stared at it.
Rafe’s face went still.
Finn looked from the key to his mother. “Did Dad put that in him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Mave could not answer.
Finn walked to the bed, took Bear from Ortiz, and examined the opened ear. “You promised you could fix anything on him.”
“I can fix that.”
“You didn’t know it was there.”
“No.”
“So you can’t promise.”
The words were not dramatic. That made them worse.
He tucked the bear beneath his arm and left with Mrs. Keating.
Mave watched the empty doorway.
Elena set down the unwanted chocolate. “He’ll come back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He’s nine.”
“That’s old enough to leave a room.”
Rafe looked at the key. “Safe-deposit box.”
Ortiz placed it in an evidence envelope. “Maybe.”
“You’ll need a warrant.”
“I know what I need.”
“And if the box is under Jamie’s name?”
“Then Ms. Donovan may have legal standing as the guardian of his next of kin, depending on the institution and account documents.”
Mave laughed once, without humor. “Depending.”
Ortiz glanced at her. “That word keeps courts employed.”
The bank matched the key by noon. The box belonged to a private vault company in the Financial District, not a conventional bank. Jamie had rented it under his own name six weeks before his death and prepaid ten years in cash.
The company’s lawyer refused access without a court order.
The district attorney’s office wanted the contents preserved. Federal agents wanted jurisdiction. Jamie’s estranged mother, alive in Florida and unaware she had a grandson until Finn was two, called after seeing the news and announced she might challenge Mave’s right to the box.
By evening, three institutions and a woman who had not attended Jamie’s funeral were arguing over a key found inside a child’s stuffed bear.
Rafe stood at the window while Mave ate half a cup of hospital soup.
“You could make them open it,” she said.
He did not turn. “Yes.”
“How?”
“Ways Detective Ortiz would object to.”
“Do you still use those ways?”
He looked back. “You’re asking whether I’m a criminal.”
“I’m asking whether the answer matters to you.”
“It matters more than it used to.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Mave pushed the soup away. “Jamie was scared before he died.”
Rafe waited.
“He bought oranges. He hated oranges.”
“That frightened you?”
“He was pretending to be normal. People buy the wrong things when they’re pretending.”
Rafe came closer but did not sit. “Did he name anyone?”
“No. He asked whether Finn’s heart condition could get worse from stress.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him babies didn’t understand bills.”
Rafe’s eyes lowered to the tray.
“I thought he was worried about money,” she said. “I made him feel stupid.”
“You were nineteen.”
“I was tired.”
“That isn’t the same as cruel.”
“It can feel the same to the person hearing it.”
A notification lit her phone. The fundraising page had passed one hundred thousand dollars.
Mave turned the screen facedown.
Rafe noticed. “That could cover the surgery.”
“It was made without my permission.”
“You can close it.”
“Then people will say I’m ungrateful.”
“They already say worse.”
“That must be easy when you’ve had practice.”
His mouth tightened slightly. “No.”
May you like
For the first time, she believed him.
Rafe’s father, Salvatore Colazo, had built Harbor Meridian Freight before Rafe was born and used it to move more than legal cargo through the Port of Boston. By the time Rafe inherited control, the company had warehouses, restaurants, construction interests, and a reputation that outlived many of the men who created it.
