He Sacrificed Our Son, But Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Papers at the Party
Nine days after the warehouse, Maura signs her divorce filing on the cake table at Nico's birthday party. Carlo reveals Finn's casket was moved into the family mausoleum at dawn and Vincent says he signed for it and will never sign hers.
Maura Donnelly signed the divorce filing on the cake table, between the candles and the knife.
Her in-laws and their friends stood on the lawn and watched her do it.
It was her husband's nephew's eighth birthday.
The balloons were blue, and a man in a vest was twisting them into dogs for the children.
Nine days earlier, in a warehouse on the docks, a man in a grey coat had told Vincent he could carry out one boy.
Vincent had picked his nephew.
He had not once looked at his own son.
Maura capped the pen and held the folder out to the lawyer beside her.
"File it today," she said.
The lawyer, a small woman in a navy suit who had refused the offer of wine, tucked the folder under her arm.
Across the table, Vincent stared at it.
He was holding the cake knife in a bandaged hand.
Gauze was wound up to his knuckles on both sides, and the left one had gone yellow where the burns wept through.
He had gotten those going back into the fire for Finn.
Maura had thought about that every night for nine nights, and it had not changed what she was doing.
"Maura," he said. "Not here."
"You haven't answered a call in nine days," she said. "This is the one room your whole family is in."
Before she came, she had knelt in the grass and put a wrapped fire truck in Nico's arms.
Nico had held it without opening it.
"Are you mad at me?" he had asked.
"Never at you, baby," she had said, and meant it.
Now she felt a hand close warmly over her own.
"Daughter." Carlo Saraceno stood at her elbow in his grey three-piece suit, his silver hair combed back, his eyes wet.
He had held her hand through the whole funeral Mass, and she had let him.
"Grief makes the wrong hands sign things," he said gently. "Come inside. Eat something. We will talk when you can see straight."
"I can see fine, Carlo."
"You are not sleeping. Cormac tells me you are not eating."
"My brother talks too much."
"Your brother loves you." He patted her hand twice. "So do we. This family does not let go of its own."
The lawyer shifted on her feet and looked at the gate.
At the end of the drive, Cormac was waiting in his truck with the engine running.
He had said he would come in, and she had told him one Donnelly at a Saraceno party was plenty.
"Papers are for the court, Carlo," Maura said. "I'm not asking the family."
Carlo sighed and shook his head slowly.
"Then let me give you some peace instead," he said. "Finn went into our mausoleum at dawn this morning."
The garden was quiet except for the balloon man's squeaking.
"The priest said the prayers. I stood with him myself." Carlo's voice stayed soft. "A Saraceno sleeps with the Saracenos. And I had the box sealed at the morgue and signed for it with my own hand, so that nobody would ever have to look at what the fire left."
Maura took her hand back.
"You moved my son," she said. "Today. While I was at my brother's, ironing a dress."
"Your grief was already so heavy."
She turned to Vincent.
He had put the knife down. The cake sat uncut in front of him, with eight candles on it that nobody had lit.
"Did you know?" she asked.
"I signed for it," he said.
"You signed for my son's grave and didn't call me."
"Yes."
He did not say he was sorry.
He did not say anything else at all, and that was when she knew she was done asking.
So Maura stepped out.
She walked down the long lawn between the tables with the lawyer a pace behind her, and the guests parted and did not meet her eyes.
Nico stood by the hedge with the fire truck still wrapped in his arms.
She stopped, touched his curls once, and kept going.
At the gate, a hand caught her wrist.
It was the left one, and she felt the damp gauze through her sleeve.
"Let go, Vincent."
"I will sign anything else you put in front of me." His voice was low, and nobody else on the lawn could have heard it. "My name on every account. The house. My share. All of it is yours."
"I don't want your money."
"Then hear this." His grip did not tighten, but it did not loosen either. "I will never sign those papers. Not this year. Not in this life."
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