I
’m very excited,” Dr. Jonas said. “Her failure to respond to Thorazine and other treatments made controlling Elaine’s psychotic breaks nearly impossible. But the Clozapine has shown marked effectiveness. It’s beautiful to see.”
Rese looked into Dr. Jonas’s Santa Claus eyes, still unnerved by the bottlebrush brows that topped them. “So she’s doing better?”
“She’s doing remarkably.”
“Does she want to see me?”
His bristly mustache stood out when he smiled. “I’m sure she does. Sometimes her negative symptoms—that is, her inappropriate expressions—make it hard to determine her desire for things. We have to look at the whole picture, agitation, sleep patterns, how well she eats and communicates. She was much calmer whenever Vernon visited. After his death, her delusions reappeared until we adjusted her dosage. It’s not an exact science, but you learn what to look for.”
“But she is communicating?”
“Some days she’s quite talkative and moderately lucid.” He laced his fingers across his chest. “And the important thing is that, in the absence of delusions, I don’t believe she is dangerous to herself or to you—as long as she stays on the medication.”
Rese digested that. It was what she’d been hoping to hear, wasn’t it?
He leaned forward. “Her condition is not healed, but controlled.
You understand the difference?”
She nodded. Walter was blocked by the drugs, as Star’s fairies had been blocked by prayer. “So if I maintain her medication, she could come home with me?”
“It’s probable. You have to decide if it’s feasible. It would be a major life change.”
She almost laughed. As though anything in her life was the way she had wanted it. “The only thing is, I’m working now. When I started this process, I thought I’d be there, at the inn. But I’m back in renovation. I work at home for some of it, but most is on site.”
He lifted his hands from his chest. “She’ll need someone with her. If not immediately attending, at least on the premises. The insurance benefit could provide home care, or—”
“I have a friend there. She mostly paints in the garden. Mom could sit with her.”
He nodded. “She’d like that.”
“I’ll talk to Star.”
“Good. Have you heard from the county?”
“I had the home study, and they checked my credit and determined I have no criminal record. Now they have to make sure I’m not drumming up dependents so I can defraud the state or rip off the insurance company.”
He laughed. “Establishing your competency as guardian.”
Her throat tightened briefly. “Am I competent?”
His eyes softened so much that fifteen years ago she’d have climbed into his lap. “I think you’re extremely competent.”
The words almost brought tears, but she was conditioned to block them.
He said, “I’ve put that into my report, though these next few years might show us something.”
She didn’t need the reminder. “I guess I’ll deal with that as it comes.”
“You have a good deal of your father in you.”
She smiled bleakly. “The best of both of them?”
He reached across the desk and closed her hands into his. “I do believe that.”
Her throat had closed, but she forced her voice through it. “So I’ll wait to be approved, then …” A thought suddenly occurred. “Should I ask Mom if she wants to live with me? She’s been here so long it might be hard to …”
“Let’s go see, shall we?”
They walked together to the visiting room, and Rese looked up when the nurse brought Mom in from another door. She tried not to hope for too much. The nurse seated her mother, while Dr. Jonas stood near. Rese drew a breath and sat down. “Hi, Mom.”
She looked up. “Because it’s a very bad feeling, a very bad feeling.”
The doctor nodded his encouragement, so Rese reached across the table and touched her hand. “Mom? It might be possible for you to live with me in Sonoma. Would you like that?”
She turned until her eyes found Dr. Jonas. “Do I know this one?”
It felt like something had sat on her chest.
“What do you think, Elaine? Do you recognize this girl of yours?”
Rese could barely stand the gaze that came back and scrutinized her, then slid away. “I told the truth. I told. But he’s gone, gone, gone.”
Tears stung. Okay, she was human. It hurt that Mom didn’t know her, but she had to get past that. Maybe in time …
“What have you done with my little girl? They put her somewhere I can’t find, and the feeling is very strong now; it’s very strong, and if you wait, you’ll see, they’ll take you too.”
“I’m right here, Mom. It’s Rese.” At least she knew she had a daughter.
“Theresa?”
It was like sunshine to her soul—and what better gift for her twenty-fifth birthday? “That’s right.” She could hardly be expected to recognize her after so few visits. But they would change that. “Do you want to come live with me?”
“Yes.”
The word was clear and unencumbered by nonsense. Even though it might be no more than something pulled out of the air, she wanted to sink to the floor and lay her head in her mother’s lap.
“Well, if you keep doing so well, and I pass everyone’s scrutiny, we’ll do it, okay?”
Mom’s finger had not ceased its flicking motion since she sat down. She didn’t answer. Twice would be asking too much. Rese looked up at the doctor, then back. “I’ll see you soon, Mom.”
She thanked the doctor and drove home, hardly containing her emotion. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was happening. She swallowed back the tears. Fifteen years of loss being restored one day at a time.
Star was in the attic assembling a jigsaw puzzle on the floor. The design was a heap of multihued snails almost identical in size and shape with only shade variations to distinguish them.
An effective torture, Rese thought as she stopped above her. “Star, it looks like I might be able to bring Mom home.”
In the past that would have been enough to send Star spiraling out of sight for days, but Rese was hoping the connection she’d witnessed between them at the center might make a difference. Star had projected a lot of her own issues onto Mom, but when she saw her again after all the years in between, they had shared a moment of understanding and recognition.
Star looked up. “You mean here?”
Rese nodded. “Her medication has made a big difference. Dr. Jonas thinks she’s no longer dangerous.”
To a little girl with no defense but the mysterious presence who wouldn’t let her die
. “She said she’d like to live with us, and … I hoped we could give it a try.”
Star blinked. “ ‘Then ’twere well it were done quickly.’ ”
She seemed to mean it, but that wasn’t the biggest thing. Rese knelt. “Now that I’m working, I can’t be here all the time. Would you be up for watching her, just being with her when I’m not?”
Star blinked. “You’re asking me to take responsibility for Elaine?”
Rese swallowed. “It’s a lot to ask, I know. But I thought—”
“Yes. I’ll watch your mother when you work.”
Rese sat back on her heels. “You will? You don’t mind?”
Star shook her head. “I’m here anyway.” She hadn’t left the property since they’d come back.
Rese pressed her palms to her thighs. “That’s great. I mean, you can say no… .”
“I said yes.” Star picked up a piece. “What color would you say this is?”
Rese considered the puzzle piece. “Mostly blue.”
Star stared across the length of the attic. “Elaine saw the colors.”
Rese nodded. “Yes.”
“I wonder what she’ll see now.”
“She’ll see you, Star.”
Star set the piece with a dozen others of similar hue.
Rese watched for any sign of resentment. Her throat tightened. “And here’s the other thing. If I start having psychotic episodes, you’re in charge of us both.”
Star looked up. Rese braced herself for a flippant or caustic remark, but Star said, “Why did you go back to work?”
She hadn’t expected that, but it must be her day to feel everything. It had been three weeks since they’d talked, but it might have been that morning. “Because Lance isn’t coming.”
“So we’re not running an inn?”
She shook her head. “More like a shelter for misfits.”
Star’s face flashed with acute delight, then she tossed her head back and laughed. Rese laughed with her, and it caught them both up until they were holding their stomachs and lying on the floor. When they had nearly recovered, Star rolled her head to the side and their gazes met. “Do you hate him?”
“I don’t know. Right now it just hurts.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.”
————
In the month and a half since they’d finished the letter, Nonna’s room had become a shrine of flowers and cards, prayers and novenas. People came by, leaving small tokens of love and respect, and though Nonna paid no attention, Lance found each face sweeter, purer than he’d seen it before. As they came to sit or say a few words, to bathe or feed or change her clothes or bedding, he observed an essence in each person that had never seemed so bright.
Even Pop, when he held Nonna’s hand and kissed her fingers, showed no toughness, just a gentle “How are you, Momma?” He didn’t pray out loud, but Lance felt his prayers. They didn’t talk, but he sensed Pop reassessing him. He’d expected him to give it up already, but that wasn’t possible.
He’d brought up the job once, but Lance had earned his portion of the rent by soloing two parties, playing a wedding with Chaz, and finding odd jobs in the neighborhood. Most of his free time he’d spent with Nonna, though it seemed there was less and less he could do for her.
Physiologically, there was no reason for her to be failing. She ate and drank what she was given, moved with assistance, but spoke no word and showed no interest. A visiting nurse had checked her over and found nothing to warrant this slide. It was shock and heartsickness that had drained her spirit of life. He had never known her to give up, but she was giving up now.
In the chair beside her bed, Lance clenched his jaw. He had fasted and prayed for her to find strength, and for Detective Gamet to find answers. Neither had happened. Gamet had returned the file with an apology. “I can’t commit the resources. We have too many cold cases as it is.”
“What about the Borsellinos?”
Gamet had not liked the question. “Get outta here, Lance. Do something with your life.” But when he’d stood there still, Gamet had placed his fists on the desk. “I’ll tell you this much. Paolo Borsellino? He’s in Ryker’s, serving life for racketeering, conspiracy, and murder.”
Not for conspiring to murder Nonno, and the one who’d committed it might still walk free. The curse was unreturned until the vendetta was settled, but no one seemed to realize what was at stake. Lance had left there bleak and angry. Every time he turned to some other authority, it came back to him.
He hadn’t gone to Nonna’s room when he got back. He’d gone to work, searching public records and tangential leads to locate the men identified in the file. Two were dead, one besides Paolo incarcerated, but of the others, all but one still lived in the area. So he’d started his own detailed account of each.
Over the next week he’d located homes and offices and recreational spots; cars, boats, schools, and churches—significant places in the life of the Borsellino family. Mostly alone, but sometimes with Rico, he had moved through uptown Manhattan, swank Chelsea and Long Island neighborhoods. Though he had no training, surveillance had come naturally—imagine that.
In a sense, he now worked undercover for Nonno, his eyes, as Vittorio had been. After the first week of locating, he’d started in to learn his enemy. And for that Sofie’s Neon was a no-can-do. He’d hit up Saul Samuels. In return for playing his niece’s bat mitzvah—Rico air-brushing the toms and cymbals—he got use of Saul’s silver Mercedes. Saul didn’t drive it much anyway.
Now he sat with Rico outside a Chelsea townhouse. At first, he’d expected crack houses and gang lords. But though the family had begun that way and undoubtedly profited still from illicit operations, the Borsellinos had risen to decadent opulence and bought themselves respectability.
He had to laugh at his own family, still tucked away in their fourstory building, his aunts and uncles thinking they’d made good, moving north to the suburbs. But behind his laugh he seethed, not that these people had more, but that they’d built it on his family’s blood. “It’s obscene, Rico.”
“Yeah. The wages of sin.” He formed a crooked grin. “If Juan wasn’t so stupid, I’d have grown up here.”
“If you’d grown up here, you’d be one of them.”
Rico sobered. “I didn’t mean it, ’mano.”
Lance turned back to the townhouse where a woman, the second wife of Ricky Borsellino Jr., stepped outside to catch a cab. He might have followed the cab, but he knew she was picking up their daughter from karate.
The problem with surveillance was that people became real. He now had faces to the names, faces for the wives and ex-wives, kids and stepkids and grandkids. Like Nonno, he’d entered their world, gone to church with them, shaken hands at the sign of peace. They had no idea who he was.
S
tar’s hair formed a soft bonnet of curls around her head where it rested on Rese’s thigh. The late-August garden was splendid in the evening light, clumps of aster and daisies, mums and fuchsia—names she’d learned from Star. Around the workshop, goldenrod and penstemon stretched proudly to the slanting rays. She had laughed when Star spread the blanket and ordered her to sit, but now she was glad to be dragged from the workshop where she’d been diligently productive.
Star held the book open against her knees. “‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’ ”
And some couldn’t see their greatness when it hit them between the eyes, Rese thought with a familiar wrench. She pushed the thought aside with something close to violence and forced her focus another direction. How could it take so long to get a hearing to vacate a stupid court order that was no longer relevant so she could bring Mom home? She’d completed her part weeks ago.