I take it carefully.
“His effects,” Caroline explains. She has not sat back down. She stands with one hand on the back of her chair, the toe of the mismatched gray cashmere sock tapping a nervous little Morse code against the rug. “Wallet, wristwatch, wedding ring.” Her voice catches on that last one. “I haven’t opened it. I thought— I thought I’d do it tonight. With a glass of wine. Like that would make it easier.”
“Things like this are never easy,” I murmur.
“No,” she agrees, “they aren’t. But you tell yourself little lies like that, you know? Just to get through the hard bits. Lately, I feel like lies are the only thing that keeps me going.”
“I know the feeling.”
She looks at me a beat longer than is comfortable. Then she nods at the envelope. “Open it.”
I unwind the little red string from around the clasp and slide the contents out onto the side table.
A leather billfold, brown, scuffed at the edges.
A gold Patek with a black alligator strap, the crown stopped at 6:11.
A platinum wedding band.
… And a thin steel ring with six or seven keys on it. House, car, a brass one with a green plastic cap… and then a smaller silver one with a square head and the wordCITIBANKetched in tiny block letters along the bow.
My heart thuds. I lift the keyring with two fingers, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.
Caroline exhales through her teeth. “I remember that key.”
“You do?”
“There’s a Citi branch on Madison and Seventy-First. He used to get this weird expression on his face every now and then and say he was going to get a sandwich, but Daddy hasn’t eaten lunch since I was born. Mom and I used to joke about it. We thought he had a girlfriend.” She laughs and knuckles at her swollen eyes. “Christ.A girlfriend.I’d so much rather be dealing with that right now. A secret girlfriend would be such a gift.”
I work the Citibank key off the ring. The little silver square sits in my palm, cool and innocuous. Then I look up at her. “You don’t know how helpful this could be,” I tell her solemnly.
Caroline crosses her arms tight over her cardigan. The tube sock keeps tapping. “Tell me something, Mr. Satyrin. Whoever did this to my parents… Are you going to make them sorry?”
I wonder what exactly she’s seen in me that makes her feel like that’s the right question to ask. By all surface appearances, I’m merely a concerned employee who is troubled by something his former boss once said.
But maybe my edges have become more visible lately. Maybe the violence that is my birthright has begun to show.
So why bother lying about it?
“Yes,” I say. “I intend to.”
Caroline studies me for a long moment afterward. Then she nods. Her shoulders drop a quarter inch and she lowers herself back into the chair across from me. The tube sock stops tapping.
“There’s one more thing. I don’t even know if it’s useful or if it’s complete gibberish, but… Well, you seem like the kind of guy who can figure out the difference.”
“I’m listening.”
“Last night,” she says, “Mom woke up.”
My breath seizes up in my chest.
“Just for a minute. Maybe less.” She wets her lips. “I was the only one in the room. Just me, and the machines, and her. And then she opened her eyes. I haven’t told anyone this yet, by the way.”
She’s looking at the rug, not at me, telling it more to the wool than to anyone in particular. I don’t interrupt. That’s the first thing they teach you in law school: Never interrupt when someone starts confessing.
“She didn’t recognize me at first. And then she sort of swam up out of wherever she was, and her hand—” Caroline lifts her own to demonstrate, fingers closing around an imaginary wrist. “She grabbed me. Really hard. She had enough air in her lungs for one word, if that. At least, I think it was a word. I keep replaying it. It was all garbled, you know, from the drugs and stuff, and it was loud in there with all the beeping shit. But it sounded like she said,Jersey.”
“Jersey,” I repeat, neutrally. “Huh.”
