It took forty minutes to calm him.

Clara carried him upstairs—he let her, wrapped around her like a koala, face buried in her neck. Rico followed. Behind them, Clara heard Vittoria's sharp voice ordering everyone else out of the garden.

They sat together on the floor of Leo's room in the dark. Clara breathed. Rico breathed. Leo shook, and sobbed, and finally, slowly, began to breathe with them.

When he was asleep, Rico carried him to bed.

Then he stood in the middle of the room and stared down at his son for a long time.

"He was in the other car," Rico said at last, very quietly. "That night. With Paolo, the driver. They were behind her. Thirty feet back. Paolo said he didn't see anything until it was over. He said Leo was asleep in his car seat."

"Maybe he wasn't asleep."

Rico didn't answer.

He walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside an inch. Below, in the garden, the lanterns still glowed over the abandoned party—the half-eaten cake, the balloons stirring in the wind, the red car lying upside down on the grass where Leo had flung it.

Nico was gone. Clara didn't know when he'd left. She hadn't seen him go.

"What did Nico say?" she asked quietly. "After?"

"He said Leo was spoiled." Rico let the curtain fall. "He said he'd return it for a blue one."

He sat down heavily in the rocking chair in the corner—Elena's chair, Clara realized; the cream scarf with green leaves was still folded over its arm. He picked up the scarf, held it for a moment, and set it back down with great care.

"When Leo was born," he said, "Nico was the first one at the hospital. Before my mother. He brought a stuffed lion bigger than the baby. Elena laughed so hard the nurses came in."

"People change," Clara said gently.

"Not Nico. Nico's been the same since he was eight years old." Rico rubbed his eyes. "Charming. Broke. Always one bet away from fixing everything."

He looked up at her.

"Don't," he said. "Whatever you're thinking. Not tonight."

So Clara didn't.

But she lay awake until dawn, and when the sky turned gray, she went to the nursery and took down the folder of drawings.

---

Leo had been drawing for weeks—Rosa had given him crayons and a stack of paper, and he covered page after page with scribbled suns and lopsided dogs and figures with enormous hands. Clara kept them in a folder in the nursery, dated, the way the counselor had once told her to do with Evan.

She hadn't looked closely at most of them.

Now she spread them out on the floor.

There it was, from the second week, on a page she had barely glanced at.

Two cars. One black, at the edge of the page. One red, in the middle, next to a rectangle Clara now realized was another car—Elena's car. Beside the red car stood a stick figure with long dark hair and something in one hand. Above it all, scrawled in orange and black, was a spiky, violent shape like an explosion.

And in the corner of the page, in Rosa's handwriting, a note she must have taken when Leo was drawing:

He says this is "Uncle car."

Clara sat back on her heels.

Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it.

"What are you doing?"

She turned. Leo stood in the doorway in his dinoNextr pajamas, rubbing his eyes.

"Looking at your pictures," Clara said carefully. "They're very good."

Leo padded over. He looked down at the drawing in her hands. His face changed—closed, went pale.

"Bad car," he whispered.

"Whose car is it, sweetheart?"

He didn't answer. He picked up a black crayon from the floor and, very slowly, scribbled over the red car until it disappeared.

Then he whispered, so softly Clara almost didn't hear:

"Uncle Nico said don't tell. Uncle Nico said Daddy go away too."

---

Clara asked Rosa in the pantry with the door closed.

"Did Nico have a red car? Before Mrs. Moretti died?"

Rosa's face went gray.

"An Alfa Romeo," she whispered. "Red. Very beautiful. He was so proud. He drove it everywhere." She swallowed. "After the funeral, he sold it. He said it reminded him of that terrible time."

"Did the police ask about it?"

"Why would they? He was family. He was at the hospital. He came after." Rosa grabbed Clara's wrist. "Signorina. What are you thinking?"

Clara didn't answer.

She was thinking about a man named Sal with a crow on his neck, saying Relax, Nico into his phone.

She was thinking about the questions in the kitchen. When does he work late? Which men are on the door?

She was thinking about four words a terrified little boy had whispered over a black crayon.

Daddy go away too.

---

Rico was in his study, on the phone, speaking quietly in Italian. When Clara knocked, he held up one finger.

She waited in the doorway with the folder pressed against her chest.

He ended the call. "What is it?"

She set the drawing on his desk.

He looked at it. At the black scribble. At Rosa's note in the corner. Uncle car.

For a long time, he didn't speak.

"Where did you get this?" His voice was very calm.

"Leo drew it. Weeks ago. Before the birthday. Before the present." Clara made herself keep going. "Nico had a red Alfa Romeo. He sold it a week after the funeral. This morning Leo told me Uncle Nico said not to tell. He said if he told, Daddy would go away too."

Rico looked up.

And Clara saw that she had made a terrible mistake.

---