Page 73 of The Golden Hour

“Abby doesn’t need protection,” I scoff. I still had a bruise on my arm where my oldest sister had punched me for laughing at the big zit on her chin.

Girls were dumb.

“Maybe not,” my dad agreed with a smile in his voice. “But look out for her anyway. For all of them.”

“Fine,” I groused.

“Promise me.”

“I promise. Goodnight, Dad.”

The heat of his hand faded as he stood. I wanted to ask him to stay but couldn’t.

“I love you, bud. Sleep tight.”

What a shit job I’ve done making good on that promise. I barely know my sisters as adults, and they barely know me. I send texts on birthdays and Mother’s Day, and presents to their kids at Christmas, but that’s been the extent of my involvement in their lives.

After Dad’s death, there was a nonstop stream of police, lawyers, child therapists, and family counselors. Silent dinners eating mushy casseroles gifted by neighbors. Nights spent sleepless, listening to my mother sob in her bedroom. My sisters had each other—always close, they banded together even more tightly in their grief. And the promise I made to my father was forgotten.

It’s not their fault—not anyone’s fault, really—that I was left alone. They didn’t understand what it was like to hear him die. They didn’t want to understand, not that I could blame them. I wasn’t Finn anymore. I was the Witness. An unlikely spear of justice to be thrown at Rafael Avellino. I embraced that identity with everything in me. It was all I had left of my father.

Finally close to the end of my long journey toward retribution, I don’t feel anything I expected to. No triumph or vindication. No catharsis.

Instead, I’m raw soul matter. A foal on newborn legs. Who I’ve been, what I’ve done, all the hatred I’ve nurtured so long… I see it now, the tragedy of it. My hatred kept me from love—the only necessary ingredient for living a life that matters.

Family is everything.

I turned my back on my family, and now all I want is to see them. Hold them and tell them I’m sorry. Meet my nieces and nephews. See their bright, excited faces on Christmas morning.

With Callisto at my side.

* * *

Buzz. Buzz.

Sheets whisper. There’s a small sound, like a scrape, on the nightstand.

Fighting the thick bands of sleep on my mind, I mutter, “What’s that?”

A small pause. Her hand on my shoulder. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

When I wake up, she’s gone.

39

I knew it couldn’t be that easy. Despite all the reassurances from Detective Wilson and her thick file on my family, she doesn’t know them. Not like I do.

Where there’s one good cop, there are five more open to persuasion.

My father’s words. And he was nothing if not a master of persuasion. He must have been truly flummoxed by Charles McCowen, a man who wouldn’t bend from what was right.

I doubt the family’s views on having friends among the police have changed in Vivian’s reign. She probably received transcripts of my interview within hours of me leaving the station. But I expected it—I played my hand when I fired Hugo.

“‘We live in service to the family.’ What does that mean, Uncle Ant?”

I looked away from the dirty plaque I found on the ground, half buried by sawdust. It was heavy in my small hands and felt old and important.

My uncle looked up from his whittling. “It means there’s only one way to leave the family, and that’s feet first.”

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