He embraced my mother with genuine warmth and shook my father’s hand. Celeste handed him a container without discussion. He accepted it and sat beside me.
After a moment he said, “The man moved before I understood someone had a gun.” He examined the container in his hands. “I have conducted orchestras for fifty years. I pay attention to the gap between intention and execution.” He glanced toward the surgical doors. “There was no gap.”
I nodded and looked at the television.
Eamon arrived shortly after two, still in the plainclothes jacket he’d worn in the Orpheum. He assessed the room in his practiced three seconds, sat, and accepted food fromCeleste with genuine gratitude. Then he delivered an operational summary.
Devereaux in custody, west service corridor. Landry processed. Law enforcement walked Henri from his third-row seat without incident. He had not tried to run.
“And Bridget?” Dominic asked.
“Voluntarily speaking with detectives.”
Dominic was quiet for a moment. He set the container aside and rested both hands on his knees.
We formed a quiet vigil, waiting for news. My father and Celeste fell into a conversation about a restoration project in Esplanade Ridge. He’d worked there the previous spring, and he sketched problems in the air with both hands while Celeste asked precise questions.
My mother and Eamon moved to the window. I watched them from across the room, standing shoulder to shoulder.
At some point, I decided I needed to move.
I told my father I was going to find a water fountain. He nodded without looking up from the diagram he was drawing in the air for Celeste.
The corridor beyond the waiting room was quieter. Linoleum and white walls. I turned left toward the vending alcove and stopped.
Bridget Marchand was sitting in a chair against the wall outside the waiting room doors. She faced the window rather than the door and still wore her concert blacks. On the table beside her, she had a cup of coffee from the vending machine she wasn’t drinking.
She heard my footsteps and turned. We looked at each other.
There was nothing to say that would have been honest and brief. She glanced at the dried blood on my cuff. Then she looked back at my face.
I got water from the fountain down the hall. On my way back, I stopped beside her chair.
“He’ll recover fully,” I said.
She closed her eyes briefly. Opened them. “Thank you.”
I returned to my group. Dominic was still in his chair. He had not fallen asleep. He was awake, looking at nothing in particular.
I sat beside him. After a moment, I whispered, “She’s in the corridor.”
He turned his head to face me.
“She came,” I said. “She won’t join us, but she came.”
Dominic’s hands rested on his knees, and he looked at the double doors that led to the surgical corridor. Finally, he said, “Tell her she may play the Orpheum again. When she’s ready.”
“I will.”
He nodded once and returned to looking at nothing.
My father continued to describe salvage projects to Celeste. My mother had returned to her chair with a cup of tea from somewhere. Eamon was at the table, working through something on his phone. After a while, he set it down and moved to sit beside me, in the chair Dominic had vacated when he moved to the far wall.
We didn’t talk immediately. He sat the way Thiago sat, still and contained.
Then he said, “I found him working at a pharmaceutical warehouse in New Jersey.”
I looked at him.
