Chapter 2 - The Six-Year-Old with a Wrench
The storm lasted four hours.
By seven, rain hammered the metal roof of Vale Motor Repair hard enough to drown out conversation.
I should have left.
I had stayed alive by understanding that unexpected circumstances were dangerous circumstances.
Instead, I sat at a scarred wooden table eating grilled cheese with a six-year-old.
Sophie had insisted.
“You can’t have soup without grilled cheese.”
“I wasn’t aware of the law.”
“It’s a rule.”
“Federal?”
She thought about it.
“Probably.”
Elena hid a smile as she carried three bowls of tomato soup from the small kitchen behind the garage office.
“You've been warned.”
I looked around.
The place was clean but old.
Family photographs covered one wall, though most showed Sophie.
Sophie as a baby.
Sophie holding a tire pressure gauge.
Sophie asleep on a large brown dog.
Sophie at perhaps four years old standing beside Elena in front of the garage.
One photograph showed Elena with an older woman.
Another frame had been turned facedown.
I noticed it because people like me notice things that are intentionally hidden.
I did not touch it.
Elena sat across from me.
“So, Adrian.”
The way she said my name told me she still knew I had withheld something.
“What do you do?”
“Transportation.”
“That explains the suit.”
“Does it?”
“Nobody who actually works on trucks wears a watch like that.”
I glanced at my wrist.
Sophie leaned over.
“How much?”
“Elena said, “Sophie.”
“What?”
“You do not ask people how much things cost.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s rude.”
Sophie looked at me.
“Is it?”
“Sometimes.”
“How much?”
I laughed.
Elena put a hand over her face.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
I told Sophie, “More than your wrench.”
She seemed disappointed.
“My wrench is good.”
“I’m sure it is.”
The rain continued.
We talked.
Or, more accurately, Sophie talked and Elena occasionally tried to stop her from revealing every detail of their lives.
They owned seven acres.
Elena had inherited the garage from her father.
Her mother had died three years earlier.
Sophie liked pancakes but hated eggs unless they were inside cake.
Her kindergarten teacher had told Elena she asked too many questions.
Sophie considered that unfair because, as she explained, teachers were supposed to have answers.
I found myself laughing more in one evening than I had in months.
That bothered me.
Pleasure had always felt suspicious.
The Moretti house where I grew up had been enormous, beautiful, and almost completely humorless.
My father, Vittorio, had measured people by usefulness.
My mother had died when I was twelve.
After that, the house had felt like a hotel occupied by armed ghosts.
I never had siblings.
At least, that was what I had always believed.
At eight-thirty, thunder shook the windows.
Sophie jumped.
Then pretended she had not.
“You afraid of storms?” I asked.
“No.”
Another crack of thunder.
She moved closer to Elena.
“Only loud ones.”
Elena kissed the top of her head.
I looked away.
There are things a man can miss without realizing he misses them.
Safety.
Warm kitchens.
A parent whose first instinct is comfort rather than discipline.
I had money.
Power.
Men who would kill for me.
Yet sitting in that old garage, I understood how poor some parts of my life had been.
The rain eventually weakened.
Elena stood.
“I’ll check the road.”
I followed her outside.
Water ran in silver streams across the gravel.
“You should wait until morning,” she said.
“I can drive slowly.”
“The temporary repair isn’t something I’d trust through standing water.”
“You always this cautious with customers?”
“You aren’t a customer.”
“Then what am I?”
She looked at me.
“That depends on whether you tell me your last name.”
There it was.
I smiled faintly.
“You noticed.”
“You arrived in an armored luxury sedan wearing a suit that costs more than my truck, and you keep checking windows whenever headlights pass on the highway.”
“There haven't been any headlights.”
“Exactly.”
Smart woman.
Dangerously smart.
I could lie.
Normally, I would.
Instead I said, “Moretti.”
All color left her face.
It happened so quickly another man might have missed it.
I did not.
“Elena.”
She stared at me.
“Moretti?”
“Yes.”
“From New York?”
“Yes.”
She turned toward the garage.
I caught her wrist gently.
“Why does my name scare you?”
“It doesn’t.”
“That was a terrible lie.”
She pulled free.
“I don't know you.”
“You know my name.”
“Everybody knows your name.”
“Not like that.”
The door opened.
Sophie appeared.
“Mom?”
Elena immediately changed expression.
“I’m fine, sweetheart.”
Sophie looked between us.
“Is he bad?”
The question hung there.
I expected Elena to answer quickly.
She didn’t.
That hurt more than it should have.
Finally she said, “I don’t know him well enough to know.”
Sophie considered me.
Then announced, “He said thank you when I fixed his car.”
Elena’s eyes closed briefly.
“That isn’t the complete test of human character.”
“It helps.”
I crouched so Sophie and I were eye level.
“Your mother is right to be careful.”
“Are you dangerous?”
Children ask the questions adults spend entire careers avoiding.
I could have lied.
Instead I said, “Sometimes.”
“To bad people?”
I thought about that.
“Sometimes bad people.”
“Good people?”
Elena looked at me sharply.
I answered more quietly.
“I've made mistakes.”
Sophie nodded as though this was acceptable.
“Mom says everybody does.”
Elena looked away.
That night, I slept above the garage.
At least, I tried.
At 1:17 in the morning, I woke to footsteps below.
I reached for my weapon.
Then I heard Elena speaking quietly.
On the phone.
The storm had restored some signal.
I moved toward the staircase.
I did not intend to listen.
Then I heard my name.
“Moretti.”
Silence.
Then Elena whispered, “Adrian Moretti.”
A long pause.
“No. He doesn't know.”
Another pause.
“I don't know how he found us.”
My body went completely still.
Found us.
Not met us.
Found us.
Elena’s voice dropped.
“No, I haven’t told Sophie anything.”
Silence.
“You promised nobody knew we were here.”
Another pause.
Then she said a sentence that changed everything.
“If Silvio finds out Adrian is here, he’ll come.”
I knew only one Silvio connected to my family.
Silvio Vescari.
My father’s fixer.
A man who had disappeared nineteen years earlier after being blamed for the murder of an accountant in Queens.
Officially, nobody knew what had happened to him.
Unofficially, my father had once told me Silvio would never cause trouble again.
I descended one step.
The wood creaked.
Elena spun around.
The phone dropped from her hand.
We stared at each other.
I spoke first.
“Who are you?”
She backed toward the workbench.
“Go upstairs.”
“No.”
“Adrian—”
“You just mentioned Silvio Vescari.”
Her eyes filled with something between anger and fear.
“You were listening.”
“I heard my name.”
“That doesn't give you the right—”
“You said he would come if he knew I was here.”
I stepped closer.
“Why?”
“I can't tell you.”
“Then tell me why you know him.”
“I said I can't.”
“Elena.”
“Leave.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“In the morning.”
“You invited me into your home.”
“That was before I knew who you were.”
“And now?”
She looked toward the ceiling.
Toward where Sophie slept in the tiny apartment connecting the garage to the house.
“Now I know exactly what you are.”
I should have been angry.
Instead I heard the fear underneath her words.
Not fear for herself.
For Sophie.
I lowered my voice.
“Is somebody threatening you?”
“No.”
“Is Vescari alive?”
She said nothing.
“Is he coming here?”
Her eyes moved toward the window.
That was answer enough.
I looked outside.
Nothing but darkness and wet gravel.
“When did you last see him?”
“I never did.”
“But you know his name.”
“My mother did.”
My pulse changed.
“Your mother knew Silvio?”
Elena's jaw tightened.
“She knew your father too.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“What did you say?”
She immediately regretted it.
“Nothing.”
“You said your mother knew my father.”
“I’m done talking.”
“My father died eight years ago.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Everybody knows when Vittorio Moretti dies.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
She turned away.
I caught a glimpse of the facedown photograph on the shelf.
The one I had noticed earlier.
I walked toward it.
Elena realized what I was doing.
“No.”
She moved fast.
Not fast enough.
I picked up the frame.
“Give me that.”
I turned it over.
My lungs forgot how to work.
The photograph was old.
At least thirty years.
A younger woman stood beside a black Cadillac.
Beautiful.
Dark hair.
Smiling.
Beside her stood a man in an expensive coat.
My father.
Vittorio Moretti.
Younger than I remembered him.
His arm was around the woman’s waist.
He was smiling in a way I had almost never seen him smile.
I looked at Elena.
“Who is she?”
Her eyes filled with tears she clearly hated.
“My mother.”
I stared at the photograph again.
Then at Elena’s face.
And suddenly I saw something.
The shape of her eyes.
The line of her jaw.
Something I had seen every morning of my childhood when I looked in a mirror.
“No,” I whispered.
Elena said nothing.
“How well did your mother know my father?”
Her lips trembled.
Before she could answer, we heard a noise outside.
An engine.
Far away.
Then another.
Elena looked toward the window.
Fear replaced everything else.
“Turn off the lights.”
“What?”
“Now.”
She ran for the switch.
The garage went dark.
I moved to the window.
Two sets of headlights were crawling slowly down the distant road.
Not passing.
Searching.
May you like
And suddenly the question was no longer how Elena knew my father.
It was who else knew I had found her.
