“There was a big old pear tree in the yard next door, and I hid in its branches to watch the boy bring his dog out after lunch each day. It was an English bulldog, which is a completely useless animal. No good as a guard dog, no good for hunting, and lazy as the day is long.”
Patrick didn’t want to hear this. It seemed too real, too tragic, but he kept listening, revolted and entranced.
Mick took another swig of cognac, then continued. “All kids like puppies, and I started bringing one with me when I staked out the house. One day after the nanny went back inside, I slipped into the yard. The boy didn’t seem to mind, but his dog sensed the puppy I had hidden in my coat, and it came lumbering over. I showed the puppy to the boy, and he asked if he could play with it. I put a finger over my lips to shush him and said we would need to go into the yard next door if he wanted to play with the puppy. He was happy to agree. After I had him in the neighboring yard, I conked him over the head. And that was that.”
Mick’s story came to a halt, but Patrick needed to keep pushing. “How did the Italians get him?”
Mick shrugged and refused to answer.
“How did the Italians get him, Mick?” Patrick demanded.
Mick started weeping, moaning that he was surely going to hell because of how that child suffered, and it was all his fault. He sobbed until he got sick in the chamber pot.
When Patrick pressed again for more details, Mick unleashed a string of curses and threw the bottle of cognac at Patrick’s head. Patrick ducked, and the bottle smashed against the wall.
“I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen to the kid, I swear it!” Mick whimpered. “I should have taken better care of him. I should have gotten him a doctor.”
“So he died, right?”
Mick nodded, weeping. “That sweet little kid is gone forever. He never had a chance.”
That was the last that Mick revealed. Patrick risked a look at Gwen. Her face was stark with anguish, and he covered her hand with his.
“I’m breaking every rule in the book by telling you this, but Mick can’t be prosecuted for it anymore, and you deserve to know what happened. He told the truth about how he snatched your brother.”
Gwen squeezed his hand. “The man in the courtroom, the one who had my wedding ring—he claimed to be related to Mick, but he looks like my father, not Mick Malone.”
Patrick’s gaze flew to hers. Apparently, Gwen had the same suspicion he did, but the possibility that Willy Blackstone had survived was minuscule.
“There was a $100,000 reward for information about your brother,” he said. “There’s no way someone wouldn’t have come forward to claim it. I think William died from pneumonia, but I don’t know the circumstances. The only thing I know for sure is that Mick can’t be tried a second time. He got away with it, and the government can never come back for a second bite at the apple.”
With each word he spoke, Gwen’s shoulders slumped a little more. “Is he at least sorry?” she asked, her voice tissue-paper thin.
“I believe so. It’s been thirty years, and it’s tormenting him still. If he were a practicing Catholic, I’d tell him to go to confession and make a clean breast of it. He never will, but I think he regrets what he did.”
“So do I,” Gwen said. “So did my parents. To their dying day, they always wondered what happened to my brother.” She turned her eyes to him. “You are far too good for Mick Malone.”
“That’s not a very high bar,” he said, trying to ignore the surge of feeling from the simple way she held his hand. Then she let it go and turned around to tug the window back open. He helped, and she crossed back into the apartment, leaving him feeling irrationally bereft.
“The carriage is here to take you back uptown,” he heard Hiram tell her.
Gwen would return to her world. That was probably for the best, but he would never forget what she had been for him during these past twenty-four hours.
15
Over the next week, Gwen tried to keep the whirlwind of painful memories at bay by lavishing attention on her house and garden. She pruned herbs and crossbred roses in her backyard sanctuary. In the evenings, she embroidered new wall hangings for the dining room. Her home was nothing like the cold marble mansions where the rest of the Blackstones lived. Gwen always felt out of place in the vacant grandeur of those palaces, and had chosen to live in a warm, cozy home of hand-carved wood, soothing colors, and a splendid garden that felt like paradise.
Perhaps if she had been blessed with children, this house wouldn’t matter so much, but she loved every board, shingle, and windowpane of this home she’d designed and decorated from the ground up. Each room reflected her taste, from the trailing ivy vines carved on the fireplace mantel to the iron hardware inspired by medieval knotwork. Gwen had embroidered the coverings on the seat cushions from her own design of a rose trellis. Rugs loomed by local weavers covered the floors, and tiles from an artisan’s kiln surrounded the fireplace.
Everything in this comfortable home was exactly how she wanted it, which was why she would fight hard to keep it, especially since her husband’s mistress intended to take it away.
It was right after dinner when Vivian arrived on Gwen’s doorstep. Gwen reluctantly allowed her inside, since she didn’t want the neighbors to witness this embarrassing confrontation.
“Jasper would have moved heaven and earth to protect his daughter,” Vivian said as she paced in the parlor. “I think you’re being very selfish by denying Mimi a proper roof over her head and the protection of his name. Those were the only things he wrote in his will. His only dying requests.”
Gwen remained seated at her dining table with the bonsai tree before her, pretending a calm she did not feel as she clipped the miniature tree to maintain its dwarfed shape.
“If Jasper wanted Mimi to have his name, he could have divorced me and married you,” Gwen said. “He didn’t.”
