Clara didn't sleep for five nights.

She went back to her old life because there was nothing else to do. She picked up shifts at a diner on Fourth Avenue. She signed Evan's permission slips. She paid the rent with money she felt guilty for having.

Two men sat in a gray sedan across the street from her building, day and night. They never spoke to her. They nodded when she passed.

Every night at two o'clock, she woke up.

She lay in bed staring at the water stain on the ceiling and wondered whether Leo was crying in the dark. Whether anyone was sitting outside his door. Whether anyone remembered the cinnamon.

On the sixth night, at exactly two o'clock, someone knocked.

Three short raps.

Clara was at the door before she remembered to be afraid. She looked through the peephole.

Rico stood on the landing alone.

No Dante. No jacket. Just a gray sweater and a face that looked as if it hadn't slept in a week.

She opened the door.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

"He's eating again," Rico said finally. "As of this morning. I thought you'd want to know."

Clara's knees almost buckled. She gripped the doorframe.

"Is he—"

"He's not okay. But he's eating." Rico glanced down the dark hallway. "Can I come in?"

---

They sat at her tiny kitchen table under the flickering light. Evan's door was closed; she could hear him snoring faintly.

Rico looked around the kitchen—the pizza-slice magnet, the chipped mugs, the drawing of a lighthouse Evan had made in third grade still taped to the refrigerator.

"You kept his drawings too," he said.

"Every one."

He reached into his sweater and set a folded piece of paper on the table between them.

Clara unfolded it.

A red car. A stick figure with long dark hair, holding something long and black.

"He drew it again," Rico said. "Four nights ago. He gave it to me. He told me what Nico said." His voice was steady, but his hands, flat on the table, weren't. "Don't tell, or Daddy go away too."

Clara looked up at him.

"Dante found the Alfa," Rico said. "It was sold through a chop shop in Canarsie three days after the funeral. Cash. The buyer had it repainted black and shipped to New Jersey. The shop owner keeps records because he's afraid of exactly the kind of people he works for." He swallowed. "The front passenger window had been replaced. Before the sale."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Nico owes Tommy Caruso four hundred thousand dollars," Rico said. "He's owed it for over a year. Elena found out. Rosa told me yesterday—Elena said something to her the week before she died. Nico is in trouble. I'm going to tell Rico." He closed his eyes. "She never got the chance."

"Rico," Clara whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"The newspapers said I was the target." His laugh was terrible. "Everyone said it. I believed it. I've spent six months planning what I'd do to the Carusos. And the whole time, the man who gave them her schedule was sitting at my dinner table, eating my mother's cooking, holding my son."

He opened his eyes.

"You told me to look. I told you to get out."

"You were protecting your family."

"I was protecting myself. From knowing." He leaned forward. "I'm not good at saying this, Clara. I've never had to say it. In my family you don't apologize. You make it right or you make it go away."

"You don't have to—"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I was wrong. I was cruel to you, and you didn't deserve it, and my son paid for it."

Clara looked down at the drawing. Her eyes were burning.

"He asks for you," Rico said. "Every day. Every night."

She nodded, unable to speak.

"So do I," he said quietly.

She looked up.

He held her gaze. He didn't explain it. He didn't take it back.

"Come home," Rico said. "Please."

---

They drove back to Dyker Heights at four in the morning with Evan asleep in the back seat.

In the car, Rico told her the rest.

"I'm not going to the family," he said. "If I go to my uncles, they'll handle it the old way. Nico disappears. The Carusos retaliate. More cars slow down outside more charity dinners. It never ends." He looked at the dark road ahead. "I talked to a detective. Ana Ruiz. She worked Elena's case. She's been trying to get someone in my family to talk to her for six months."

Clara stared at him. "You talked to the police."

"Not yet. Not officially. On Saturday I meet her with everything Dante found. The car. The records. The phone records between Nico and Sal Greco." He paused. "Leo's drawings."

"What happens to you? If you do that?"

"My family will never forgive me." Rico's hands tightened on the wheel. "My mother may not speak to me again."

"And you're doing it anyway."

He was quiet for a long time.

"In the restaurant, you said he needed everyone to step back," he said. "I've been thinking about that. My whole life, this family has decided everything. Who I married. What I did. Who lived. Who didn't." He glanced at her. "I'm stepping back."

---