The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: R.M. and I.M.

He didn't answer me right away.

He held me for another minute with his hand spread on my back, and then he helped me back over the console into the passenger seat.

He passed me my sweater, and he looked away while I put it on.

It was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in a year.

Then he turned the key, ran the heat, and said, "Rocco was the funny one."

He said it to the windshield.

"I was the one who got the chair, but he was the one people wanted at the table.

"He told a joke in church once, at our father's Mass, and my father laughed in the front pew, and the priest had to stop."

"What was the joke?"

"I've forgotten it.

"I remember my father laughing."

The Gulf boomed against the wall.

I pulled my knees up onto the seat and listened.

"He was twenty-four when I took over," Nico said.

"He didn't want it.

"He wanted a boat and a girl and a place with no one's name on it.

"I let him go.

"I gave him a salary and told him to stay away from the business, and he sold insurance in Beaumont and called me on Sundays."

"Marine insurance."

"That was real, for a year or two.

"He was good at it."

"He told me he sold it."

"I know," Nico said.

"He told me about you."

I turned my head.

"He told you about me?"

"He told me he'd met a woman in the waiting room of a dentist's office.

"He said she was a medical student, and she'd corrected his pronunciation of a drug.

"He said he was going to marry her."

I couldn't say anything.

It was true, all of it.

It was a dentist's office in Beaumont, the spring I was twenty-six, and the drug had been amoxicillin, and he had pronounced it like a Greek island.

"He never said your name," Nico said.

"He said he was keeping her away from us.

"I didn't push."

"Why would he keep me away?"

"Because he knew what we were," Nico said simply.

"He didn't want you near it.

"He was right."

His hands were tight on the wheel.

"He called me on a Sunday in February, five years ago, and said he'd see me for dinner the next week, that he had something to tell me.

"He didn't come.

"They found his truck on the ferry road, on the Bolivar side, with the engine running and the driver's window shot out.

"They said two men.

"They said it was the Houston office."

"Who's that?"

"Another family.

"They have a warehouse on the Ship Channel and a quarrel with ours that is older than I am."

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