Chapter 3 - The Drawing Beneath the Mattress
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I climbed the grand mahogany staircase, my blood rushing through my veins with the force of a ruptured dam.
Every memory of the last fourteen months unspooled in my mind like a reel of barbed wire:
Why had Olivia stopped sleeping in her bed, insisting on dragging her pillow into her sisters’ room every night?
Why did Nora burst into silent, hysterical tears whenever the guards changed shifts in the courtyard?
Why had my children stopped speaking to me?
Because Marco was always behind me.
Whenever I entered a room, Marco was two steps back. Whenever I kissed them goodnight, Marco stood in the hallway doorway with his arms crossed. Whenever I begged them to tell me what was wrong, they weren't looking at their father—they were looking at the man with the gun standing over my shoulder.
I reached the second-floor nursery, knocked three times in our private rhythm, and the heavy oak deadbolt clicked back.
Grace opened the door. The room was softly lit by nursery lamps. Olivia and Nora were sitting huddled together on the plush sheepskin rug, while Sophie sat on the edge of the low bed, clutching a worn velvet jewelry box that had once belonged to Isabelle.
I walked in, closed the door, and locked it.
I knelt on the floor in front of Sophie, bringing myself down to eye level with my six-year-old daughter.
“Sophie,” I whispered, my voice breaking as I reached out with both hands. “Look at me, sweetheart. Look at Daddy.”
Sophie lifted her gaze. Her hazel eyes—identical to Isabelle’s—were brimming with giant, trembling tears.
“Is Marco the man who hurt Mommy?” I asked, keeping my voice softer than a summer breeze.
Sophie’s lower lip quivered. She looked toward the locked door, then looked at Grace.
Grace walked over to the bed, lifted the corner of the small mattress, and pulled out a single sheet of heavy drawing paper folded into quarters.
“Olivia gave this to me three nights ago, Mr. Romano,” Grace said, handing it to me. “She made me swear on her mother’s cross that I would never show it to anyone unless you came home without Marco.”
I unfolded the paper with shaking fingers.
It was a crayon drawing.
On the left side was a car outside a red brick school. A woman with long brown hair lay on the pavement, surrounded by bright red scribbles. Standing over her was a tall figure drawn in black crayon.
On the figure’s chest was a meticulously rendered silver star badge with six points.
And across the figure’s right wrist, drawn in distinct blue crayon, was a dark, jagged mark: a tattoo of a coiled serpent wrapped around an anchor.
The exact tattoo Marco Santoro had gotten in the Marines thirty years ago.
Written at the bottom in Olivia’s careful eight-year-old handwriting were the words that shattered my soul:
May you like
‘The bad uncle said if we tell Daddy, he will put us in the ground with Mommy.’
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