Chapter 2
“My father left many things behind,” he said.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
“Coming from you, that’s not reassuring.”
This time, the corner of his mouth moved.
The almost-smile made him look younger.
Less like the untouchable man who controlled every room and more like someone who had once been a boy trying to understand a complicated family.
I looked away first.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because Vanessa left.”
“That’s a strange answer.”
“It’s the honest one.”
He rubbed his hands together, the expensive watch at his wrist catching the light.
“As long as she was in Chicago, I could keep telling myself there would be another opportunity.
Another dinner.
Another excuse to speak to you.”
“You had three years of opportunities.”
“I wasted them.”
The sincerity in his voice unsettled me more than any grand declaration could have.
I picked up the charcoal and turned it between my fingers.
“What changed?”
“When Vanessa called me from the airport, she said she was tired of being treated like something fragile that needed to be guarded.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“She isn’t.”
The fireworks grew brighter as midnight approached.
A burst of green opened over the river, reflected in the dark windows of the surrounding buildings.
“Vanessa’s always been brave,” I said.
“You just never let her prove it.”
Dominic looked at me.
“I thought protecting her meant making decisions before she had to make them.”
“That isn’t protection.
That’s control.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly to argue with.
He looked down at his hands.
“My mother spent most of her life allowing other people to decide what was best for her.
My father decided where she lived, who she spoke to, what she knew.
By the time she realized she wanted something different, she didn’t know how to ask for it.”
There was no bitterness in his voice.
Only regret.
“Is that why you’re so protective of Vanessa?”
“That, and because when my mother died, Vanessa was twelve.
She was the only person in the house who still believed families were supposed to love each other without conditions.”
I hadn’t known that.
Vanessa rarely spoke about her mother.
She had told me once that her mother loved gardening and old movies, but after her death, the house had become quieter.
Dominic had been twenty-four then, already managing the family’s businesses while trying to raise a little sister who didn’t want to be raised.