Chapter 1 - The Girl Behind Him
The most feared man in Chicago was reaching for my daughter when she pointed at his dead wife’s locked room and said, “The pretty lady told me you needed a hug.”
Dante Falcone went still.
So did every person in that hallway.
My name is Rosa Bennett. I cleaned his house for nineteen dollars an hour, and until that moment, my biggest fear had been losing my job.
Now I wanted my daughter behind me.
“Sophia.” I held out my hand. “Come here, baby.”
She looked confused. She was three. She still called spaghetti “basketti” and thought thunder meant somebody upstairs had dropped something.
She had no idea what she had just done.
For two weeks, she’d been following Dante down that marble hallway every afternoon at four, copying his stiff walk, his hands clasped behind his back, even his permanent scowl.
The staff knew.
Nobody had the nerve to tell him.
That afternoon, he had finally turned around.
“Why do you keep walking like me?”
“Because you look lonely.”
Then she had explained, with the patience children save for grown-ups who missed the obvious, that he walked alone every day, so she walked with him.
And Dante Falcone had laughed.
I had worked there eight months. Nobody had ever heard him laugh.
Then Sophia asked for a hug.
Then she mentioned the lady.
Dante slowly lowered himself onto one knee.
“What pretty lady?”
His voice was quiet. That frightened me more than shouting would have.
Sophia pointed again.
“The one with the shiny bird.”
Dante’s eyes moved toward the locked door.
Behind him, Mrs. Bell, the housekeeper, gripped the handle of her cleaning cart.
“Rosa,” she whispered.
I didn’t look at her.
“My daughter has an imagination,” I said. “She talks to her stuffed animals. Yesterday, she said the refrigerator was mad.”
Dante barely seemed to hear me.
“What does the bird look like?”
Sophia drew a small circle in the air.
“Blue.”
A man appeared at the far end of the corridor. Silver hair. Expensive gray suit. Dante’s older brother, Vittorio.
“What’s going on?”
Nobody answered.
Dante stood.
“Where’s the key?”
Mrs. Bell shook her head. “Sir, you told us—”
“I remember what I told you.”
Vittorio approached.
“Dante. Whatever this is, don’t let a child upset you.”
Dante held out his hand.
Mrs. Bell took a key from a chain beneath her uniform.
The lock clicked.
For eighteen months, that room had stayed closed.
Now Dante pushed the door inward.
Afternoon light cut through dusty curtains. A velvet chair faced the windows. On a little table sat a photograph of a dark-haired woman.
Pinned to her dress was a blue hummingbird.
Sophia smiled.
“That’s her.”
May you like
Then she looked past the picture.
“Why is her bird broken?”
