I sat in the car for another moment. Then, I went inside.
They were in the kitchen.
My mother was at the counter and she was not cooking—she was standing at the counter with her hands flat on the surface and her back to the door and her shoulders doing something I had never seen them do, which was shake. My father was at the table with a cup of coffee he wasn't drinking. When he looked up at me, his face had aged ten years since yesterday.
"Mary Catherine," he said.
My mother turned.
I had braced for the handkerchief. For the controlled, immaculate grief of Patricia Donovan managing a public disaster. What I got instead was her face stripped bare—no performance, no architecture of composure, just a woman who was frightened and exhausted and had not, today, made it to the church that had held her whole life together for years.
"We missed Mass," she said. The words came out like they were the worst part. Like of everything that had happened, this was the thing that had finally cracked the surface.
"I know, Mama."
“So many years," she said. “Your father has never missed a Sunday. And today—" She stopped. Her chin moved. "God is telling us something, Mary Catherine. I truly believe that. When everything falls apart at once, it isn't coincidence."
The Catholic in me understood exactly what she meant. The woman I was becoming understood that she was wrong, and that this was not the moment to say so.
"This isn't God," I said carefully. "This is a man. A federal agent named Dominic Craine who came to my studio this morning and?—"
"Your studio," my father said. Quiet. Just those two words, but they had a weight behind them that told me he hadn't known. Of course, he hadn't. Nobody had.
"I've had a painting studio on Wentworth Street for five years," I said. "I should have told you. I didn't, and I'm sorry for that." I sat down at the table across from him. "Daddy. Look at me."
He looked at me.
"The raid on your office," I said. "I believe it's connected to someone I met this weekend. A man. His family is under federal investigation, and Craine—the agent—came to my studio this morning to warn me off. To pressure me into informing on them." I held his eyes. "I said no. And I think this is his response."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"What man?” my father asked.
"His name is Brock." I paused. "Brock Dane."
My mother made a sound.
"Patricia," my father said. One word. She went quiet, but her hands had come up to her mouth.
"The Danes," my father said slowly. He was a businessman. He'd lived in this city his whole life. He knew the name the way everyone knew the name—carefully, with respect for what was attached to it. "You've been—how did you?—"
"Yesterday," I said. "After the church. He was outside and I—we talked. We spent the day together." I watched my father's face process this and kept my voice even. "He didn't tell me whohe was. Not exactly. I figured it out. And I know how it sounds and I know what the timing looks like, and I'm not asking you to understand it right now. I'm telling you the truth."
The silence stretched.
"One day," my mother said. Soft. Almost to herself. "You left your wedding and in one day you've brought a federal investigation to our door."
It landed exactly as hard as she intended.
"That's not—" I started.
"I'm not angry with you." She said it in the tone that meant she was, but was choosing not to be, which was somehow worse. "I'm frightened. I'm frightened for your father and for this family and I am sitting in my kitchen on a Sunday morning having missed Mass for the first time in thirty years because federal agents were in your father's office." She pressed her fingers to her lips. "And yesterday you were getting married, and now there is a man?—"
"Mama—"
"I don't understand," she said simply. "I don't understand any of it."
The blue door opened.
