The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Channel

The Houston man's house stood behind an iron fence on a street of live oaks in Pasadena, with a basketball hoop over the garage.

Nico parked across the street and turned off the engine.

Rain ran down the windshield in sheets.

"You don't have to come in," he said.

"I told you I'd be in the room," I said.

"This is the room."

He nodded once.

He got out with a hat in his hand, though he was not a man who wore one.

He had taken it from the hall stand that morning without knowing why.

It was a thing to hold.

A woman in her fifties opened the door before we rang.

She wore a gray cardigan, with reading glasses pushed up into her hair.

She looked at Nico with an expression that was wary and not at all surprised.

"Mr. Vasari," she said.

"Mrs.," said Nico.

"My husband isn't home."

"I know," Nico said.

"I came to speak to you."

She looked at me.

"This is my wife, Dr. Ines Vasari," he said.

It was the first time he had said it to a stranger.

I felt it in my knees.

"Come out of the rain," the woman said.

We sat in a plain front room with a plastic runner on the carpet and a photograph of three grown children on the wall.

She did not offer coffee.

Nico sat on the edge of her sofa with his hat on his knee.

I watched a man who had stood unmoved at forty funerals fail to find the first word.

"Five years ago," he said, "my brother was killed on the Bolivar ferry road."

"I know," she said.

"I swore a vendetta on your husband," Nico said.

"I know that too," she said.

"I was told he gave the order," said Nico.

"He did not," the woman said.

She said it flatly, without heat.

She was a woman who had said it into a lot of silences.

"My husband never met your brother.

"He didn't know his name until he read it in a card you sent, which said what you meant to do to him.

"We moved our daughter out of Texas that year.

"My husband stopped taking the long road to the warehouse.

"For five years he has looked in the mirror of his own car."

"I know," said Nico.

"I was wrong."

"That's all?"

"No," Nico said.

He stood up.

He put his hat on the sofa.

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