He Sacrificed Our Son, But Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Stairs

Vincent waits on the stairs outside Cormac's flat with burned hands, and Maura treats them. He explains his oath to his dead brother, and leaves her the key to the mausoleum.

At two in the morning, Cormac shook her awake with a wrench in his other hand.

"There's a man sitting on our stairs," he whispered. "Dark coat. Hasn't moved in an hour."

Maura did not need to ask which man.

She had been lying on the pull-out couch in her brother's living room, looking at the ceiling, with Finn's pajama top folded under her cheek.

"Put the wrench down," she said.

"He's got two guys parked at the bottom of the building."

"I know. They followed us from Dedham."

"Then let me hit him with it, just once."

"Cormac."

"A small hit." He lowered the wrench with real regret. "Elbow, maybe."

She pulled a cardigan over her scrubs and opened the door.

Vincent sat on the third step down with his back against the wall and his bandaged hands open on his knees.

He looked up when the light fell across him.

The gauze had gone dark brown at the palms, and he held his hands open on his thighs because he could not close them.

"You'll bleed on the landlord's carpet," Maura said.

"I haven't touched anything."

"That's what I mean."

She held the door open and waited.

He stood and came in, and Cormac backed into the kitchen with the wrench held low at his side.

"Sit," Maura told Vincent, and pointed at the chair under the lamp.

She dragged her kit out from under the sink, the old canvas bag she had carried since the clinic's first winter.

Vincent sat very still.

Cormac leaned in the doorway and watched with his arms folded.

"Do I need to be here for this?" he asked.

"You're the only reason he isn't dead on my landing," Maura said. "Stay."

"That is the nicest thing you've said to me since March."

She cut the gauze off the left hand first.

Under it, the skin of his palm had split in two places and was shining wet and red.

He had burned it on the warehouse door handle, going back for Finn, and she knew that without being told.

Her eyes stung.

She held her hand an inch above the wound, as she always did, and felt the heat come off it.

"They said the second hand is worse," Vincent said. "I didn't let the doctor at the house touch them."

"Why not?"

"He works for my father."

She stopped with the scissors open.

"Hold still," she said.

She cleaned the palm with saline, slowly, and felt his wrist go rigid under her fingers.

When she looked up, he was watching her face and not his hand.

"That hurts," she said. "Obviously. Stop looking at me."

"I'm not looking at the burn."

"I know what you're looking at."

Cormac coughed into his fist.

"I'm going to go be in the hallway," he said. "In the hallway, with the wrench, where I can hear everything."

He went.

The kitchen was quiet except for the tap dripping.

"Ask me," Vincent said.

"Ask you what?"

"What you've wanted to ask since the dock."

She dressed the palm in nonstick pads and wound the clean gauze, one turn over the next.

"Why didn't you look at him?" she said.

His breath went out of him slowly.

"My brother died with his head in my lap," he said. "The last thing he said was Nico's name. I swore to him I would raise that boy as my own."

"I know about the oath, Vincent. I was there when you told the priest."

"Then you know what I saw in that warehouse. Two boys. Both of them mine." His voice did not shake. "I looked at Nico and I could carry him. I knew if I looked at Finn, I would never be able to put him down."

She tied off the bandage.

"So you didn't look."

"Yes."

She did not tell him the rest, the one small word Finn had said while Vincent's back was already turned.

Vincent's face did not change, but his hand closed in hers, and she felt every cut in it.

"Say it," he said. "Whatever it is."

"There's nothing to say."

She let go.

Her own fingers were trembling, and she put them under her arms.

"You can sit in the car," she said. "You can send your men to sleep in the bushes. I am still going to file. I am still leaving."

"I know that."

"Then why are you here?"

He did not answer that.

He reached into his coat with the bandaged right hand and set something small on the table between them.

It was a brass key, old and heavy, on a loop of black cord.

"Every Saraceno son has one," he said. "It opens the mausoleum door."

Maura stared at it.

"My father says Finn is at peace," Vincent said. "My father also said it was a kindness to seal the box and sign for it himself. I don't know why I've been thinking about that since the party."

"You signed too."

"I did." He stood up. "That's why I'm giving you the key."

He walked to the door and stopped there with his back to her.

"His men change shift at two," he said. "You have until ten past."

She heard him go down the stairs one step at a time.

Cormac came back into the kitchen and looked at the key.

"Do we keep the wrench," he said, "or do we need a bigger wrench?"

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