I sank into the chair across from her, and for a long moment, neither of us spoke.She simply waited, her hands wrapped around her teacup, while I tried to remember how to breathe.
“He’s a complicated man,” Alice said finally.“Raphael.”
A broken laugh escaped me.“That’s one word for it.”
“I’ve known him since he was born.”Her voice softened, going somewhere far away.“Held him in my arms when he was just a few hours old.He was such a beautiful baby.Dark eyes, like his father.His mother’s smile.”
The shift in topic caught me off guard.I hadn’t thought of Raphael as someone who’d been a baby once, who’d had parents who held him and smiled at him.He seemed like he’d sprung fully formed from some dark corner of the universe, already hardened and dangerous.
“You knew his mother?”
“I raised her.”Alice’s voice carried old grief, heavy and worn smooth by years.“From the time she was just a girl.She was the kindest person I’ve ever known.An artist.A dreamer.She saw beauty everywhere, even in dark places.”
“What happened to her?”
Alice was quiet for a long moment, her gaze drifting to the window where snow had begun to fall again, fat white flakes drifting past the glass.
“She died when Raphael was three.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a tragedy.A terrible, violent tragedy.”Alice’s hands tightened on her teacup, knuckles going white.“His father killed her.”
The words dropped into the silence like stones into still water.I felt the ripples move through me, disturbing everything I thought I knew.
“What?”
“His father was… unstable.There were moments of violence before, but nothing like that night.He lost control completely.By the time anyone reached them, she was already gone.”
I couldn’t breathe.Raphael’s father had killed his mother.Murdered her.And Raphael had been there, a child of three, when it happened.
“He was hiding in the closet when the police found him.”Alice’s voice was barely a whisper.“He’d watched the whole thing.”
My breath caught, something shifting in the center of me that I couldn’t name.I thought of the man who’d just been on his knees before me, using pleasure as a weapon of control.I tried to reconcile him with the image of a terrified child, alone in a closet, watching his father destroy everything he loved.
“Raphael saw it?”
Alice nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“What happened after?”
“His maternal grandparents took custody.Briefly.”Alice’s expression hardened.“His grandfather was a senator.Image was everything.They didn’t want the reminder of what their daughter had married.What she’d died for.”
“They abandoned him?”
“They sent him away.To a boarding school in another state.He was three years old.”Her voice cracked.“I tried to stay in contact, but they made it difficult.They didn’t want anyone who remembered his mother to have access to him.Too messy.Too complicated.”
I thought of my own father, who for all his flaws had at least been present.Had at least tried, in his limited way, to protect me.
Raphael had been three years old.Orphaned by violence.Abandoned by the family who should have sheltered him.Shipped off to a school where no one knew him or cared about him.
“The school,” I heard myself ask.“Was it… good?”
Alice’s silence was answer enough.
“It was not good,” she said finally.“The records I’ve seen, the scars he carries… it was not good.He was there until he was eighteen, when his grandfather cut off funding entirely.After that, he was on his own.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
