Chapter 5
Alma Reyes arrived on a Wednesday morning with a leather satchel and a calm, assessing gaze. She was in her forties, small and compact, with short dark hair and a voice that made Vincent think of a good teacher he had once had in the third grade.
“Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “I know this isn’t comfortable.”
“It’s necessary,” Vincent said. “That’s different.”
She smiled slightly. “Yes. It is.”
She walked through the house slowly, taking notes. The marble foyer. The formal living room no one used. The dining table that could seat sixteen. The courtyard with the fountain. The security cameras mounted discreetly above each door.
“How many people work here?” she asked.
“Maria, the housekeeper. A cook three days a week. A gardener. Tony and two other men on security.”
“Do they carry weapons?”
“Tony does.”
“Why?”
“Because of who I am.”
“Who are you, Mr. Romano?”
Vincent met her eyes. “A man with a family and a business. Some of the business is old. Some of it is not clean. I’m trying to change that.”
“Trying.”
“Yes.”
She wrote something down.
They sat in the study. Ms. Reyes asked about Catherine. About the day she died. About Luca. Vincent answered every question, even the ones that felt like a hand closing around his throat.
“He was in the garden with her,” he said. “He was four. He didn’t understand what was happening. Maria found him sitting beside her. He had her hand in his.”
Ms. Reyes’s pen stopped. “He witnessed it.”
“Yes.”
“And after that?”
“He stopped speaking. Not immediately. Over a few weeks. First he stopped asking questions. Then he stopped answering. Then he stopped making any sound at all.”
“Did you get him help?”
“Every kind. Psychologists. Therapists. A specialist from Johns Hopkins. They all said the same thing. He needs time. He needs to feel safe.”
“Do you think he feels safe here?”
Vincent looked around the study—the dark wood, the heavy curtains, the photograph of Catherine on the desk that he had not moved in two years. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hope so.”
Ms. Reyes asked to see Luca’s room. Vincent led her upstairs.
The room was large and bright, with a window seat overlooking the lawn, a custom bookshelf, a closet full of clothes with the tags still on.
The toys were arranged on shelves in their original packaging. The books stood in perfect rows, spines uncracked.
Ms. Reyes looked at the toys for a long moment. Then she said, “Does he play with any of these?”
“No.”
“Why are they still in the boxes?”
Vincent opened his mouth. Closed it. “I don’t know.”
She asked to speak with Luca alone. Vincent waited in the hallway, his back against the wall, while Ms. Reyes sat on the floor of his son’s room with a sketch pad and a box of crayons.
Through the door, he could hear her voice, low and calm. “Can you draw your family for me, Luca? However you want. There’s no wrong way.”
Silence. The scratch of crayons.
After twenty minutes, Ms. Reyes came out. She held the drawing. Vincent looked at it.
A tall house with no windows. A small figure inside. Outside, a lighthouse. And in the corner, a woman with a ponytail.
“He drew the diner,” Vincent said.
“He drew a place where he feels seen.” Ms. Reyes put the drawing in her satchel. “I’m going to speak with his grandmother now. And his tutor. And then I’ll write my report.”
“What will it say?”
“That depends on what I find.” She paused at the top of the stairs. “Mr. Romano, I’ve done this for eleven years.
I’ve seen children who are neglected in clean houses and children who are loved in messy ones. Your house is not messy. Your son’s room looks like a catalog. That concerns me.”
“I buy him things.”
“Yes. You do.” She looked at him. “When was the last time you sat on the floor and played with him?”
Vincent did not answer.
“That’s what I thought.”
She interviewed Maria for half an hour. Vincent stood in the hall and listened without shame.
“He sits outside the boy’s door every night,” Maria said. “He doesn’t go in. He’s afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
“Does he ever say the right thing?”
“Not often. But he tries. He tries more than he used to.”
“Does Luca know that?”
Maria was quiet. “I don’t know.”
Diane arrived at noon. She and Ms. Reyes spoke in the living room for forty minutes. When they came out, Diane’s eyes were red.
“I’m not doing this to punish him,” Diane said to Vincent, in the hallway, while Ms. Reyes waited by the door. “I’m doing it because I lost my daughter and I will not lose my grandson to a house full of ghosts.”
“He’s not a ghost.”
“No,” Diane said. “You are.”
The report came four days later. Howard called Vincent at the office and read it to him over the phone.
“She recommends a ninety-day placement with Mrs. Whitfield,” Howard said. “Supervised visitation for you. A hearing in ten days if you want to contest it.”
Vincent sat very still. “And if I don’t contest it?”
“Then he’s in Montclair by the end of the month.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Then we need to show the court that the boy is thriving.” Howard’s voice was patient, the way it got when he was delivering bad news. “Not alive, Vincent. Thriving. Right now, the only place anyone has seen him thrive is a diner you don’t own, with a waitress you tried to hire and insulted.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
“I’ll fix it,” he said.
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
May you like
He hung up and drove to the diner. It was three in the afternoon. The sign said CLOSED. Through the window, he could see Emily wiping down the counter, her ponytail loose, her apron off. She looked up when he knocked.
She did not open the door right away.
