Every Man Who Loved Me Left Hating Me, Only My Father Knows Why novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Second One

Theo, her second boyfriend, shows the scar her father's men gave him for refusing the money, and sends her to Danny's mother.

Remo drove me home in silence, and I didn't speak to him either.

At the Pesaro gate, I got out of the Lincoln and called my cousin.

"Come and get me," I said. "Bring your car. Don't tell anyone."

"Where are we going?"

"To find every man who ever left me."

Bianca arrived in nine minutes, with her hair still pinned up from dinner and her heels on the passenger floor.

She took one look at my dress. "Okay. Who died?"

"Nobody. Maybe somebody. Drive."

Remo stood by the Lincoln with his hands in his pockets and watched us go.

"He'll follow us," Bianca said.

"Let him."

I told her everything while she drove, about the film and the voice and Danny.

She didn't say a word until we crossed into Warwick.

"I never liked that room," she said finally. "Even when we were kids, I never went past the third stair."

Theo Marsh bartended at a place near the airport, a long brown room with a neon beer sign.

He had been my second boyfriend, four years ago, a gentle graduate student who made me pancakes.

Now he had a limp, and he was drying glasses by the register when I walked in.

He saw me, and the towel stopped moving.

"Out," he said.

"Theo, please."

"I've got nothing to say to you."

"Just tell me what you saw down there."

"You know what I saw."

"I swear to God, I don't." I laid both hands on the bar. "Five men have walked out of that room hating me and none of you will tell me why."

He studied my face for a long moment.

The bar was nearly empty. A man in the corner booth lifted his head and put it down again.

He waved the other bartender into the back room and went on drying the same glass.

"Is it true?" he said quietly. "You really didn't know?"

"Know what?"

"That you were working for him."

"Theo!"

"Your father sat me down in front of a screen." His voice shook. "You were in a restaurant. You were laughing. You said I was easy and that your father should send the next one. You said I made pancakes like a servant."

"I never said that!"

"I heard you say it."

"It isn't me."

"It was your face, Lucia. It was your voice."

Bianca leaned in beside me. "What happened after?"

"Your father turned on the lights." Theo's hand went to his knee. "He said I could take fifty thousand dollars and move to Arizona."

"Did you take it?"

"I said no. I said I was going to the police."

He pulled up his trouser leg.

The scar ran from the top of his shin to above the knee, thick and pink.

"Two men were waiting in the parking lot that night," he said. "They broke it with a pipe. They told me the next one would be the other leg."

I couldn't breathe.

"I never knew," I whispered. "Theo, I swear on my mother, I never knew."

"Then you're the only person in your family who didn't."

I felt Bianca's hand close around mine.

"The third one took the money," Theo said. "The fourth one too. Only I said no. That's why I'm still angry and the others are just scared."

"Why did he do it?" I asked. "My father. Why?"

"He didn't say. He only said one name." Theo looked toward the corner booth. "He said I should be glad I wasn't the first."

"Danny," I said.

"You know about Danny?"

"I'm learning."

"Then go and see his mother." He wrote an address on a coaster and pushed it across the bar. "She's still on Atwells. She keeps his room the way it was."

I took the coaster.

Outside, the parking lot was cold and wet.

The Lincoln sat under the lamp at the far end, with its lights off.

Remo was leaning against the hood.

He had followed us the whole way, and he had not come in.

I walked straight toward him with the coaster in my fist.

"Tell me where Danny is," I said.

He didn't answer.

"Tell me, Remo."

He straightened off the hood, and for the first time in my life, I could not read what was in his face.

"Not here," he said. "Not tonight."

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