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For a few minutes, that’s all it is: an old man on a bench and a little boy showing off, and the old man watching every jump, like it’s the only thing in the world, calling out higher and good and again, and something in his hard old face going soft in a way I’d have sworn it couldn’t.

Marta told me he doesn’t come down. But he came down for this, for the first Accardi grandson. At one point he says, low enough that only I can hear, The first one, after all this. There’s so much grief in it that I don’t understand.

For one moment, watching them, I let myself feel something dangerous: hope, like maybe this house isn’t only what Genevieve says it is, like maybe there are better days in it somewhere.

The door bangs open and Genevieve is there, and the morning curdles.

“Well,” she says by way of announcing herself.

She’s not drunk yet, but she’s getting there, a glass already in her hand, and her eyes are bright and glassy.

“Look at this. The old man crawled out of his tomb for the help’s kid.” She laughs. “Thirty-two years I’ve lived in this house, and I don’t think I ever once got you to watch me do anything, Papa. But here you are, in the dirt, for a stranger’s son.”

“Genevieve.” Michael’s voice is flat and old and hard. “Not here.”

“Why not here? She’s family now, isn’t she? She’s sleeping in Enzo’s bed, right?” Genevieve turns to me, and under the cruelty, something is splitting open, something that’s been buried deep for years. “You want to know about better days? Ask him what happened to mine. Ask him about David.”

“That’s enough,” the old man says.

“His name was David Moretti, and I was going to marry him. I was twenty-six, and I was happy, actually happy, the one time in my whole life,” she says, her voice cracking, “and my father decided I’d be more useful unmarried and under his roof than gone and free. Then David had an accident, a terrible, convenient accident.”

She’s crying now, furious, unstoppable. “And when I went to my brother, years later, when I begged Enzo to tell me it wasn’t what I knew it was, he couldn’t. He couldn’t even look at me.”

The garden is silent. Even Matthew has stopped, sensing the thing in the air the way he senses everything. He drifts toward me until I get a hand on his shoulder.

Michael Accardi rises from the bench, slowly and with effort. When he speaks, there’s no denial in it, which is somehow the worst thing of all.

“You were always your own undoing, Genevieve,” he says, “not me, you.”

Then he turns and makes his slow way back toward the house, the cane sinking into the grass, an old man retreating to the top of his tower, and he doesn’t look back at his daughter or his grandson.

The door closes behind him.

Genevieve stands there, shaking, the glass trembling in her hand, the fury draining out of her and leaving only the wreckage behind. When she looks at me, her face is almost gentle.

“That’s the family, Stevie,” she says. “That’s what’s under all the silk. He took the one good thing I ever had and everyone in this house just let him, including the man you’re falling for, especially him.” She wipes her face with the back of her hand.

“Gen…”

“Run.” Her voice is tired. She says it like it’s simple, like she’s saying it to herself as much as to me. “You’ve still got somewhere to run to. I never did. Take your beautiful boy and run while the door still opens, before this house teaches him to be one of them, before Enzo finally starts locking doors.”

She drains the glass and walks back inside, leaving me alone in the garden with my son and the birdsong and the empty swing still swaying. The hope I let myself feel a few minutes ago is gone so completely, I can’t remember what it felt like.

“Mama,” Matthew says, leaning into my side, “is everything okay?”

I pull him close and press my lips to the top of his head and breathe him in, this sweet, serious boy with the Accardi face, and I don’t lie to him. I never lie to him.

“I don’t know, bub,” I say.

CHAPTER 25

STEVIE

Iwait until Matthew’s asleep to go find Enzo in his study. It’s the typical spot for him at this hour, usually a glass of something amber nearby, the city glowing in the distance through the window behind him.

His eyes flick up to me when I enter. I must be easier to read than I think, because whatever expression is on my face makes him set down his pen and stop working instantly.

“We need to talk about the basement,” I say.