Page 38

“That’s what you keep saying. It’s not what I asked.”

“You’ve asked enough questions today.” I stand, and he lets it end. Nick’s known me long enough not to push too hard. Just enough. The fucker.

He collects his espresso cup and mine, and the ordinariness of it declares the argument adjourned rather than settled. But he stops at the study door on his way out, and he doesn’t turn around for the last of it.

“I like her, Lupo. That was never the issue. I’m telling you the board changed shape, and she’s standing on it. Pray this doesn’t turn into a checkmate while she’s still here.” The door closes behind him.

The rest of the day is war logistics, and I run it from the study with the door shut. The house will notice, because I never shut it anymore. But it’s unavoidable. They cannot be touched by any of this.

I move money through accounts built to be watched and more through accounts built not to be. Best to keep eyes split in two directions. Flowers for the port marshal’s hospitalized mother.

Wars are always won on many fronts.

Six more men on the estate rotation, spaced wide, dressed as gardeners. Sarah’s swim lesson is Wednesday and the fence line is under protected. The pool sits in open view of the south slope. Too many trees there. So, gardener guards.

“I want to know more about the Brancati network,” I say to Nick at dusk, when the lawyers finally hang up. “Not them—I know everything about them. But I want the labs, the brokers, the buyers, and which officials cash their checks. All of it.”

Later, Veda intercepts me in the front hall before dinner, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched. “You should get better gardeners, Lupo.”

“How’s that?”

“One of them tried to prune the hydrangea with the blade backward. Nearly lost a finger.”

“Seasonal staff,” I sigh, put-upon. “The gardens are demanding in October.”

“It’s not October.”

I check my watch. “Then they’re early. Thorough people, gardeners.” I straighten a frame on the wall that was already straight, and she watches me do it. Unamused. “Dinner’s at eight. Ma made the fish for you.”

“You’re word-lawyering me, Sartorre.”

“I’m inviting you to dinner, Doctor. I don’t know what word-lawyering means.”

“And you used to say you don’t like liars. Funny that.”

“Don’t know what you’re⁠—”

“Ugh.” She turns on her heel and storms away.

It’s a damn shame I like it when women are mad at me. Her most of all. Makes for an awkward dinner for everyone else.

After dinner, I climb the stairs with a day’s worth of war planning in my shoulders, headed for my room and a drink, not in that order. Sarah’s door stops me. It stands open a hand’s width, lamplight on, voices running.

Veda is reading. Pip again, and she’s voicing the entire cast—the small, stubborn wren, the pompous seagull, and a crab who inexplicably speaks in a Boston accent, a detail Sarah has never asked about. Maybe crabs have a regional accent in their own language. I dunno. I’m not a crab-ologist.

My daughter has burrowed into the pillow, eyes at half-mast, fighting sleep for one more page and losing. The doctor slows her reading, matching Sarah’s sleepy pace and easing the story down word by word until it can settle comfortably on its own.

Neither of them knows I’m in the hall. I lean on the wall in the dark and watch through the gap, and this stopped being cover a while ago, whatever the calendar says.

I don’t keep her for Sarah.

I keep her because the house runs at a different temperature when her voice is in it. Because I’ve started routing my days to end where hers do. Somewhere between a keynote and a Sunday sauce, the asset became the woman I look for first in any room.

I know what it means when I can name the thing I can’t afford to lose. It means the enemy can name it too.

Inside the room, the story ends, and I’m starting to think ours does too. Sarah surrenders. The lamp clicks down to the small pink night-light, and I move down the hall before Veda reaches the door. If I look at her now… just no.

In my study, I pour the drink I came upstairs for and take it to the window. The gardeners who aren’t gardeners walk the dark in their spacing. I’ll have to talk to the idiot Veda saw through. That’s tomorrow’s work.