This Time I Choose Mr. Mafia novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Hold

Damiano already knew by the time I reached the Clark Street gate.

He was standing beside the car with his phone at his ear, and his face had gone very quiet.

"An ambulance," he said, lowering the phone. "Two cops. Rhett. Your stepmother."

"They came for me."

"They came for an empty house," he said. "My men are on the steps. Nobody's gone inside."

"Then I'm going to walk up to them," I said. "In front of the whole street."

He looked at the rosewood box in my arms, and then at my face.

"Get in," he said.

Oakley Avenue had come out to watch.

Old women in housecoats leaned on their railings.

A man in an undershirt stood on his porch across the street with a garden hose running onto the sidewalk, forgotten.

An ambulance was parked in front of the house with its back doors open and a folded stretcher on the curb.

Two EMTs in navy stood beside it looking like they wanted to be anywhere else.

Two cops leaned on their squad car.

Four of Damiano's men stood on the front steps, shoulder to shoulder, arms folded.

At the bottom of the steps stood my stepmother in a camel coat, holding a clipboard against her chest.

Rhett stood beside her in his navy blazer.

He saw our car and smiled.

I handed the box to Bruna, got out and walked up the sidewalk.

Damiano got out too.

"Stay by the car," I told him.

"Odessa."

"If you come with me, it's a gangster defending his wife," I said. "If I go alone, it's just me."

He stopped.

It cost him, and I saw it cost him.

The lead EMT was a heavyset woman with a gray braid.

She looked at the clipboard and then at me.

"Odessa Kinnear?"

"Yes."

"Ma'am, there's a petition here for an emergency evaluation. Your mother signed it."

"My stepmother," I said. "My mother is in Graceland Cemetery. I just came from her grave."

The EMT glanced at my stepmother.

My stepmother lifted her chin.

"She attacked her sister at a luncheon," she said. "She hears voices at night. Her own father is afraid of her."

"Name the night," I said. "Name one voice."

She didn't.

"My father had dinner at my table yesterday," I said. "Call him and ask if he's afraid."

"Ma'am," the EMT said to me, "do you know what day it is?"

"Monday, May twenty-fifth. Memorial Day."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Oakley Avenue. That's my husband by the black car. That's his sister holding my mother's jewelry box."

"Have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself?"

"No," I said. "Only of winning."

Somebody on a porch laughed.

The EMT almost did.

I turned to my stepmother.

"When did you last see me in person?" I asked her. "Before today."

She opened her mouth.

"Last Sunday," I said. "In Dad's study, for ten minutes. You stirred your coffee and called me attention-seeking."

"I've watched you on television all week."

"And you signed a petition saying I'm a danger to myself because of a television."

The cop leaning on the squad car straightened up.

"Ma'am," he said to my stepmother, "is that true?"

My stepmother looked at Rhett.

Rhett stepped forward with his warm voice on.

"I'm her ex-fiance. I've known her for years. Odessa is not well, and her husband is a man nobody on this street will testify against."

"Her husband," said Damiano from the curb, very politely, "slept beside her last night. She talked in her sleep about cutting my father's fig tree."

Two of the old women on the porches crossed themselves and grinned.

"I'm her next of kin," he said to the EMT. "She's the sanest person on this street. Including me."

The EMT looked at her partner.

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