My papa is away on business, but he is coming back, because he promised.
Valerio stood in front of a refrigerator at eleven at night, a man who'd once bought a hotel in forty minutes, and could not for several seconds remember how to breathe.
He'd flown through the night to get here. He'd rehearsed things on the plane, whole speeches, and every one of them had assumed a warm apartment, a woman, a boy. Minna hadn't taken a single one of his calls in four days. And now it was creeping toward midnight and the rooms were dark and no one had come home, and something older than reason began to move in his chest.
He called the head of their security detail.
It rang once.
"Where's my—"
"Oh, hello, cousin."
Valerio went very still. "Why do you have Johnson's phone?"
"Because Johnson is with me."
"Where's Aislinn and Louis?"
"They're safe with us, too. Don't worry."
"What game are you playing?"
"I should be the one asking you that." Minna's voice stayed level, pleasant, courtroom-calm, which from her was the equivalent of shouting. "Do you know how many times you made Louis cry?"
The refrigerator hummed. The block letters said PAPA.
"Does he hate me?"
"He should," Minna said. "But he doesn't."
"And Aislinn?" He made himself ask it. "Did you ever see her cry?"
A pause.
And when his cousin answered, her voice was unusually clogged, which was rare, close to unheard of, for a woman who kept her emotions where she kept her closed cases. "Never. Instead, she's always very thankful. Because we kept her and Louis safe."
Never. Four months, and never, not once where anyone could see, and he understood exactly what that meant because he'd fallen in love with the woman who thanked traffic, and he had to close his eyes.
"Minna—"
"Take some time to think about what your next move should be, Valerio." She wasn't pleasant now. She was quiet and final, a verdict being read. "Because if you keep messing this up, you'll scar both of them for life."
The line went dead.
Valerio stood alone in his beautiful, inhabited, empty penthouse, with a crayon version of himself watching him from the refrigerator door, and began to think, very carefully, about his next move.
"LOOK AT HIM, MINNA."
It was the last day of Louis's three-day school trip to Nantucket, the day the families were ferried in for the closing program, and Aislinn stood on the old wharf beside the whaling museum with her hands clasped under her chin, just so happy she could hardly stand still.
The day was cold and blindingly bright, the harbor full of masts, the gray-shingled town looking like it had been assembled by a committee of postcards. And out on the demonstration deck, in a little navy peacoat, her son was teaching four other second-graders how to coil a line properly, correcting their technique with the grave patience of a boatswain who'd seen forty years of sloppy work.
"Look at you," Minna said, "all blushing."
"Well, I can't help it. I'm just so proud as his Mama. He's just so handsome."
"Like his father?"
