“Nick’s reaction when he saw the news flash on the screen was almost like he knew it was going to happen,” I said. “I could just tell. Maybe I’m crazy, but there were always rumors that the Ferrari family had mobster connections. I asked him about it at dinner one night, and he seemed upset. Called it stereotypical.”
“Was he genuine about it?”
I tried my best to be honest.
“Yes, but I don’t think that means that he really has no connections or doesn’t know about those connections.”
My father just nodded. He was the kind of man that liked to see conversations as a puzzle, something to put together and figure out as more things were said.
“I got flustered when this all happened and just had to leave. I just…”
“It’s understandable, especially with everything that’s happened,” he said.
“You don’t need to apologize or explain yourself, dear,” my mother said.
I was so grateful that they had the understanding to not press further and ask questions. I just wished I knew what to do. I just wished I had a clear head so I could make sense of this.
“How long do you think until any of this makes sense to me?” I said. “How long until I know what I want to say or think?”
My father gave a compassionate smile.
“You think after all this time, your mother and I understand each other?”
My mother rolled her eyes. I supposed that was just some odd, unique way of them “understanding” each other.
“You never fully understand the other person. Well, let me rephrase that. You will never know every single little detail about the other person, because even they don’t know everything about themselves. But that doesn’t mean you can’t understand them enough to love and cherish them.”
“I guess,” I said, even though I knew exactly where my father was taking this.
“I’m not here to tell you what to do with Nick,” he said. “You’re a strong woman, and I know as horrible as Malcolm was, you’ve grown from it.”
It felt good to hear that because I wasn’t always sure that I had grown enough.
“All I can tell you is that you’ll both not know everything you ever can and you’ll know just enough to make the right choice. But for now, just spend time with Ryan. Or us, if you would like.”
“Maybe he can pretend to give you advice as a woman from a man,” my mother said.
I was so bemused by this apparent role reversal of my parents’ personality that, despite being flustered and still emotional, I actually had to laugh. I hadn’t thought that possible after this day, but if anyone could, it was my parents.
Nevertheless, despite their offer, I took Ryan a short while later and went home. My gut disagreed with my father said—why wouldn’t I know everything about Nick? And more than that, even if I couldn’t know everything about him, why couldn’t he have just told me the truth?
Unless he has told you the truth the whole time.
Maybe he really had not anticipated this happening. Maybe he really had not believed his family had ties to crime.
But that was an awfully big assumption, and I couldn’t think straight anyway.
Unlike most nights, when Ryan slept in his own room, I had him with me in the bed. He seemed to be the only male I could trust these days.
* * *
The next day, desperately seeking some normalcy, I dropped Ryan off at daycare—at least now, I thought, I wouldn’t have to worry about him seeing Daddy—and headed into the office. I gave a quick and flustered “good morning” to Jordan as I headed to my desk. I laid my purse out and booted up my laptop when I heard a knock on the door.
“How are you this morning?” Jordan said.
“Oh, fine, fine. Just, you know, Ryan was acting up—”
“I saw the news last night.”
Jordan took a step inside and closed the door. She had always seemed to understand me on a level beyond the professional, but we’d always kind of had a plausible deniability approach. She couldn’t claim to truly know my personal life if we didn’t discuss it, even if it was so obvious, we both knew the topic of conversation.
“How does it make you feel?”
No point in pretending you don’t know what she’s talking about. I leaned back in my chair.
“I’m a little frightened by it, to be honest,” I said. “He was in jail before, and I never heard reports about a prison brawl or murder. He was an evil person, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who looked to make enemies. Wasn’t a racist or anything like that, best I could tell.”
“So it’s like someone had that set up?” she said, but she was asking like a lawyer, guiding the conversation somewhere.
“I mean…maybe,” I said.
Jordan bit her lip, her eyes looking at something and into some distant past that was not here and now. My computer had finished loading and was asking for my login, but my fingers remained away from the keyboard, watching her.
“You know, a long time ago, maybe twenty years ago, one of my exes was a stalker,” she said. “The who and the where or when isn’t important. What is important to know, though, is that the police couldn’t do anything about it. I told someone close to me one day about it and my frustration. I don’t know what happened, but the stalker apparently ‘moved to a new city.’”
So like, murder?
“I really don’t know what happened,” Jordan said, perhaps reading the expression on my face. “But in time, I came to realize and appreciate the
