Chương 2
Ivy’s eyes were brown, but not Claire’s shade. Claire’s had been lighter, almost amber. These were dark enough to look black when the child was frightened.
“Mommy was sick,” Ivy said.
“Is she upstairs now?”
A pause.
“She was.”
Dominic’s hand opened around the pendant.
Skye began to cry without sound. Her mouth folded downward, and tears slid over her cheeks as she pressed her face against his shoulder.
Lauren put one hand over her lips.
Margaret sat heavily in the covered chair, sending dust into the sunlight.
Dominic stood. “Ethan, call emergency services. Tell them there may be a deceased person upstairs and two minor children in need of medical evaluation.”
Ethan stared at him.
“Now.”
Ethan took out his phone.
Dominic removed his suit jacket and wrapped it around Ivy, then unbuttoned his white shirt at the wrists and rolled the sleeves above his tattooed forearms. He lifted Skye first. She weighed almost nothing. She curled into him immediately, as if her body had made a decision before her mind could object.
Ivy resisted when he reached for her.
“I can walk.”
“All right.”
“You won’t take the necklace?”
“It belongs to you and your sister.”
“Mommy said keep it safe.”
“I will.”
She studied him. “You’re him?”
He did not pretend not to understand. “I think so.”
“The mafia father?”
Lauren let out a startled breath that sounded almost like a laugh, then looked ashamed of it.
Dominic glanced at Margaret. “Apparently.”
Ivy considered this with the solemnity of someone measuring a story against a real face. Her gaze moved over his hair, his neck tattoos, the ink across his fingers.
“Mommy said you had black marks.”
“She remembered correctly.”
“She said you were dangerous.”
The words landed without drama. Children did not know which truths adults preferred softened.
Dominic’s jaw tightened. “She remembered that correctly too.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Sirens reached the property twenty-one minutes later. Until then, no one went upstairs. Dominic would not leave the children, and he would not allow Ethan or Margaret out of his sight. Lauren stood near the windows with both arms wrapped around herself. Once, she bent to pick up the silver box, but Ivy made a sound, and Lauren withdrew her hand.
“I’m not touching it,” she said.
The child stared at her.
“All right,” Lauren murmured. “Fair.”
Police officers entered first, followed by paramedics. Dominic gave his name without offering context. One officer recognized it and looked toward his partner. Dominic was accustomed to that half-second of adjustment—the moment a person decided whether his reputation was more important than the situation in front of them.
The paramedic examining Skye was a woman with tired eyes and a red mark from her mask across the bridge of her nose. She asked Dominic to set the child on the couch. Skye refused to release his shirt.
“Can I check your arms while he holds you?” the paramedic asked.
Skye looked at Ivy.
Ivy nodded once.
Dominic sat, Skye in his lap, while the paramedic checked her pulse, temperature, pupils, and breathing. Another medic examined Ivy, who answered questions in clipped fragments. They had eaten crackers that morning. They had drunk water from the bathroom sink. Mommy had been sleeping. Mommy would not wake up. Ivy had covered Skye’s eyes before they left the bedroom.
The police found Claire in the smaller upstairs room overlooking the lake.
She had been dead for an estimated two days.
Dominic received the information while Skye’s forehead rested against his chest. He did not move. He did not ask to see the body. Not yet. The first impulse was so violent that he distrusted everything attached to it: his need to climb the stairs, to touch Claire’s face, to demand that someone reverse time, to break every object Margaret owned until the past appeared inside one of them.
Instead, he asked, “Were there signs of violence?”
The officer shook his head. “Nothing obvious. Medication bottles are present. We’ll need the medical examiner.”
Margaret made a broken sound.
Dominic turned toward her.
She had known Claire was alive. Whatever else remained hidden, that was no longer a question.
“You told me she drowned,” he said.
Margaret stared at the floor.
“You gave me an urn.”
Ethan moved toward his mother. “Dominic, not here.”
Dominic’s eyes shifted to him. “Where would you prefer?”
The paramedic glanced between them. “Everyone needs to keep voices low.”
“My voice is low.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
For the first time, Dominic looked away. He pressed his lips against Skye’s tangled hair and breathed through his nose. She smelled of dust, sweat, and the faint soap Claire had always bought because anything floral gave her headaches.
The familiarity nearly broke him.
A county child-welfare worker arrived after dark. Her name was Nadia Brenner, and she carried a canvas bag filled with forms, juice boxes, coloring books, and the exhausted patience of someone accustomed to entering rooms after families had failed.
Dominic did not like officials around children. Officials created records; records created leverage. His first instinct was to call his attorney, remove the girls, and make the entire house inaccessible to everyone except people he trusted.
He recognized the instinct for what it was.
Control disguised as protection.
Claire had once accused him of that exact habit.
He called his attorney anyway, but he kept the phone on speaker and remained seated where Nadia could see him.
“My client may be the biological father,” the attorney said. “He is prepared to cooperate fully with emergency placement procedures.”
Margaret looked up sharply.
Dominic ignored her.
Nadia crouched beside Ivy. “Do you know this man?”
Ivy looked at Dominic’s hand, where the pendant chain wound between his fingers.
“Mommy had his picture.”
Dominic’s head turned.
“Where?”
“In the blue book.”
“Upstairs?”
May you like
Ivy nodded.
An officer retrieved a weathered photo album from beneath Claire’s bed. Most of its pages held pictures of the twins: newborns wrapped together in one blanket, toddlers in winter hats, Ivy scowling at a birthday candle, Skye asleep with one hand inside a cereal bowl. Near the back were photographs of Dominic.
