Turned out Donny was going to Miami and had a business proposition for Bridges, a little bit of risk for big money. Bridges was ready to leave fishing behind, and plus he felt obligated to Donny for saving him. So the next morning, in Donny’s car, a cherry-red Camaro convertible, they headed north.
“WHY ARE YOU telling me this?” I ask.
“I’m just trying to explain how I came into your life,” Bridges says. “How I met Donny, and what happened with Marisa.”
“Why should I give a shit about this Donny?”
Bridges looks grim. But then he sees something over my shoulder that gets his attention, and I turn around to look. A monk is approaching from the abbey, a tall sturdy man with a full, round face and a salt-and-pepper beard. He stops a few yards away from us. “Samuel,” he says.
Bridges stands. “Dom Michael,” he says. “My apologies. This is Ethan Faulkner and … his friend.” He says this last with a lame wave toward Frankie. “Ethan, this is Dom Michael, our abbot.”
Dom Michael appears to have little interest in either me or Frankie. His voice is both calm and penetrating, and almost manages to mask his irritation. “Samuel, I understand you have neglected to complete your duties in the bonsai shop this morning.”
Bridges shifts his feet. “That’s true, Dom Michael. I’m sorry.”
As much as I don’t mind seeing Bridges get in trouble, I need to keep talking to him, to learn what Marisa told him, and so I stand up from my bench. “It’s my fault, Dom Michael,” I say.
Dom Michael now considers me. “Mr. Faulkner, I understand that you asked one of our brothers to speak with Samuel and he directed you to contact me. Instead, you violated our sanctuary to find Samuel yourself. I have to ask you and your friend to leave.”
I glance at Frankie, who has crossed his arms over his chest again, then back at Dom Michael. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Ethan,” Bridges says in a low voice, “you ought to do what he says.”
“Don’t think so,” Frankie says. He steps up beside me. “My friend needs to talk to this man.”
Dom Michael frowns. “This man,” he says, “is a member of our community. And our community has rules.”
“You know this guy just got out of prison, right?” Frankie says. “You want to know what he did to Ethan?”
The frown on Dom Michael’s face darkens, but I also notice that he shows no surprise or confusion at Frankie’s revelation. “I will not allow you or anyone else to violate this abbey,” Dom Michael says, his voice stern and absolute. “If you won’t leave, I’ll call the police.” He pulls out a cell phone.
Bridges looks alarmed. “Ethan … Dom Michael, please.”
“Worried about the cops, Samuel?” I say. I register the sneer in my voice, and I don’t like it, but I’m beyond polite manners at this point.
“Ethan,” Frankie says warningly.
“What?” I turn to look at Frankie, and then my heart drops and I curse myself. Bridges is an ex-con, but so is Frankie. Even as I’m thinking this, Frankie shakes his head. “Not me,” he says in a low voice only I can hear. “You. They’re going to want to talk to you about Marisa. You don’t need any cops pissed off at you right now.”
It takes a moment for the truth of Frankie’s words to get through to my head, as if static had been blocking the signal he was sending. He’s right. But I don’t have the answers I need.
“I’m sorry, Samuel,” Dom Michael is saying. “But these men must leave.”
“No,” I say, loudly, cutting off Dom Michael and getting everyone’s attention. “You don’t—none of you understand.” I turn to Dom Michael. “Both of my parents are dead,” I say. “They’re dead, and this man can tell me something about that, about why—”
“Ethan,” Bridges says, and his face is mottled with emotion. “I just wanted to get her away from him; I didn’t think that—”
“What are you talking about?” My voice is shaking a little, from anger or from grief or both, I don’t know.
“I just—I needed to get Kayla,” Bridges says, “take her somewhere she could get help. Try to get her away from Donny.”
Kayla. The girl with the silver sandal. The girl Bridges demanded come out of our house. “Donny?” I say, staring at him. “What does Donny have to do with—”
“She started screaming,” Bridges says—he hasn’t heard me, has started his story and can’t stop. “I just—I wanted to tell her it was okay, I’d help her, I wasn’t going to hurt her. Then your dad … he swung at me. I don’t blame him; I was storming into his house. We started fighting …”
Frankie’s face looks pale, even a little green.
Dom Michael raises a hand to place it on Bridges’s shoulder. “Samuel, you don’t—”
“Then you came down the hall,” Bridges says to me. “You fired that pistol, and it scared the hell out of me, out of both of us. I remember thinking you looked too young to be holding a gun. And then Donny came in …”
Ponytail. Jesus. Donny was Ponytail. I close my eyes. The fuck? One gunshot and my arm goes numb, and then a roar of shots, so loud in the front hall of my home, the burnt acrid smell of gunpowder, the blood—
“Ethan,” I hear, and Frankie is next to me. “Sit down, güero.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” I say. I
