Sean
I drive north. Triborough, Deegan. My side is bleeding through the dressing again. The brick wall did not mean to. The hand at my hip while I was inside her did not mean to. They opened it anyway.
I have one clean change in the glovebox. It is going to have to last.
She went pale when I said Greek man. Not a flinch. The exact shade of pale a woman goes when she has been carrying something for a long time and decided, in advance, never to be the one who admits it.
She knows the Greek. She has not said his name. She is not going to.
I am going to find it out on my own.
St. Helena's sits on a side street off Riverdale Avenue. Three stories of red brick. Half-lit. The kind of building you notice only at night because of the small lit cross over the door.
The night nurse at the desk looks at me. At my coat over the dressing. At my face.
She does not ask.
"Margaret Voss."
"Room 311. End of the hall. She has been waiting."
"How long does she have?"
"Tonight. Maybe morning. She has not slept since she called you."
I did not say I was coming.
She held on anyway.
Room 311 smells like every hallway in every facility where people come to die. Disinfectant. Plastic. Flowers somebody's grandchildren brought four days ago, and have not had the heart to throw out.
I push the door the rest of the way open.
She is small in bed. Smaller than I expected. White hair. Hands folded on the blanket like a child waiting to be told it is time. An IV. An oxygen tube.
Her eyes open before I have made it past the foot of the bed.
"Detective."
"Mrs. Voss."
"Margaret. Please. Sit."
I sit.
Her eyes are clear. Whatever the rest of her body is doing, her eyes have not started doing it yet. She is going to die with her mind intact.
"You came."
"You called."
"I have been calling. The calls did not go through. Someone made sure they did not."
"Who?"
"I do not know his name."
A breath. A second breath.
"Detective. I have to say something I am not going to be able to take back."
"Go ahead."
"You were not born to Frank and Karen Donovan. You were given to them."
"I know. I read my mother's diary this morning."
She closes her eyes for a second.
"Karen kept a diary."
"She did."
"She would. She knew Frank was lying about you the night he came home with you in his arms. She knew it for the rest of her life."
"She loved me anyway."
"I watched her love you. From a distance. Until the night they died."
I let her breathe.
"Who?"
"A Greek man. Cold eyes. Younger than the work he was doing. He paid me. He paid the doctor who signed the papers. He paid the orderly who walked you out the back door of St. Catherine's. He paid for everything. And he made me make the paperwork right before sunrise."
"His name."
She holds my gaze. The kind of long second a woman holds it when she has spent her entire adult life not saying a thing and is about to say it.
"Kostas Stavros."
The name lands.
I have heard the surname this week, on the wrist of a man I killed in a warehouse.
I do not need to hear it twice.
"Your parents," she says. "I do not know much. I know they were Italian. The woman who carried you was beautiful and frightened. The man whose name was on the chart in the delivery room was not the same man who came to take you. I did not ask questions. The Greek paid enough that I did not."
"You feel guilty?"
"Every day. I'm not telling you this because I'm sorry. I'm telling you because I'll be dead by sunrise. And I have one piece of information that belongs to you, not the Greek. If I die without giving it to you, the Greek wins forever."
"What information?"
She opens the drawer of her bedside table. Her hand is shaking. She takes out a small key on a thin chain.
I take it. It is small. Brass. Warm.
"Safety deposit box. Eighty-three. The Apple Bank on Fordham Road. I put it there the night Frank Donovan died. I was scared the Greek would come for me. I did not want him to find what I had kept."
"What's in it?"
"The application your mother filled out the night you were born. By hand. In the delivery room. She wrote your name in her own hand."
"And the Greek?"
"Made me file a second application with different information. I filed the second. I kept the first."
"Why?"
"Because there were two of you."
I do not move.
"Twin boys. Fraternal. Different faces, same hour.
Your brother lived. The Greek did not want him.
He wanted you. The doctor signed a death certificate that said you died of heart complications in the night.
The Greek paid the doctor, and the doctor paid me and the orderly and the night clerk, and we all made it true on paper. "
She opens her eyes.
"I watched your mother grieve you the next morning. I held her hand while she cried. I have not slept a whole night since."
I cannot speak.
"Your real names were on the application. Both of them. I have made myself forget them. They are in the box. Whatever was true the night you were born is in the box. Go in the morning. They open at 9. Tell them my name. Corporate is expecting you."
"My brother."
"Lived."
"Where?"
"I do not know. I never went looking. The not-looking was the price."
"Margaret. Why did you keep it?"
"Because every night since that night, I have woken up at 3 a.m. and remembered the face of the baby I sold. The application is what I have. It is yours. It has been yours."
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me, Detective."
She closes her eyes.
She does not open them again.
The monitor's tone changes.
A nurse appears at the door.
I am still sitting in the chair holding the key.
I do not remember walking out.
I remember Nadia against a kitchen wall.
Her hands in my hair.
Her voice breaking when I made her come.
Stop being careful.
Christ.
My life has apparently become a series of catastrophic family revelations interrupted by thoughts of a woman I should absolutely not want this much.
I am in my car in the lot before I have decided to leave.
The bad guys want you angry, Seanie. They feed off it. Get angry on a full stomach if you have to. Never on an empty one.
He was teaching me how not to get into fights at school. I was thirteen.
He was teaching me how not to get into other kinds of fights, too.
I drive south. I do not sleep. I do not stop.
I do not think about the woman in the alley.
I think about her anyway.
The Apple Bank on Fordham Road opens at 9 a.m.
I am there at 7:55.
I do not go in. I park. I walk the block. I sit in a Greek diner two doors down and watch the bank’s back door because it’s the one I would have used.
The private entrance opened before the lobby did.
A black Range Rover pulls out of the alley at 8:43.
The driver is Italian, dark-haired, and wearing a leather jacket. I have already had my hand inside.
Nadia.
She is not supposed to be here.
She glances once in the rearview mirror.
Not enough to clock me. Enough to tell me she knows exactly what she just did.
She has something.
She would not be leaving a bank before opening hours with that look on her face for anything insignificant.
I do not need a bank manager to tell me my life just changed.
I let two cars slide between us and follow her downtown.
She drives like a woman trying to look normal.
Which is how I know she is not.
She makes every light.
I make most of them.
By the time she reaches Tribeca, I know two things.
She took something that belongs to me.
And I am done letting her make decisions about my life without me.
She parks outside her building.
I stay in the car and watch her disappear inside.
Then I count to thirty.
And follow her in.