Chapter 4 - What the Bottle Took
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Dr. Harris called at seven the next morning.
I was in Salvatore's kitchen making tea he was finally allowed to enjoy.
Dominic put the call on speaker.
The lab expedited the blue bottle, Dr. Harris said.
It is not vitamins.
It is a concentrated sedative compound.
In small doses it causes slurred speech and loss of balance.
In repeated doses it causes confusion and gaps in memory.
In larger doses it can stop a weakened heart without leaving an easy trace.
Salvatore closed his eyes.
I set the teapot down before my hands betrayed me.
How long to clear the system, Dominic asked.
Days for most effects, Dr. Harris said.
Weeks for full clarity after months of exposure.
And for my father, Dominic asked.
Dr. Harris hesitated.
His stroke makes him more vulnerable.
Some confusion Celeste blamed on the stroke was likely the drug.
That sentence hung in the kitchen like smoke.
For four months this family had watched Salvatore fade at night.
For four months Celeste had stood beside his wheelchair and accepted sympathy.
She had let doctors discuss decline.
She had let Dominic discuss private care homes.
All while holding the bottle in her own handbag.
Dominic thanked the doctor and ended the call without another word.
He stood at the window overlooking the gardens.
Tell me what else I have forgotten, he said.
I did not know where to begin.
I opened the medication log to the nights marked with stars.
Those stars were nights Celeste stayed late, I explained.
Those were the nights you were at the main table.
Your father pointed to your glass on those nights too.
Dominic turned one page.
March twelfth, he read aloud.
I told him what I remembered about that night.
He had argued with a port manager on the phone.
He had drunk one glass of wine Celeste poured herself.
Twenty minutes later he had gone quiet at the table.
The next morning he canceled a meeting he did not remember scheduling.
He stared at the date like it had insulted him.
That is the night of the Staten Island agreement, he said.
Arthur said I signed it the following evening.
What about this night, I asked, pointing to another star.
April second.
He went completely still.
April second was the night his fiancée announced the wedding date.
It was also the night a young dockworker named Luis Ortega died.
A container slipped during an unscheduled night transfer.
Dominic had been told he approved that transfer by phone.
He had no memory of the call.
He had paid for the funeral quietly and carried that guilt for months.
I never approved night transfers, he whispered.
Our father banned them after Adrian died.
If I approved it while drugged, that boy died because someone used my voice.
Salvatore reached across the table.
His shaking hand found Dominic's wrist.
Not you, he said.
It took him enormous effort.
Not you.
Dominic covered his father's hand with his own tattooed one.
For a moment neither man tried to be strong.
I looked away to give them privacy a nurse learns to give.
Frank brought Celeste downstairs at nine under guard.
She wore no makeup.
Without it she looked younger and far more frightened.
She sat in the study where the transfer papers still lay open.
Dominic did not offer her coffee.
He did not offer her a chair near the door.
The lab identified the bottle, he said.
Celeste stared at the desk.
It was only to help him sleep, she said.
The doctor says otherwise, Dominic said.
He says it steals memory.
He says it could kill my father.
She began to shake her head before he finished.
I never gave him enough to kill him, she blurted.
I measured every drop.
I did exactly what I was told.
The study went silent.
What you were told, Dominic repeated.
By whom.
Celeste pressed her lips together.
Fear moved across her face like a shadow over water.
I did not have a choice, she whispered.
You had a choice every night for four months, Dominic said.
You chose the bottle.
You chose my wineglass.
You chose my father's mind.
Tears fell without any performance in them this time.
If I stopped, my father said he would let them hurt my mother, she said.
He said Dominic Romano would never marry a girl who disobeyed Enzo D'Amato.
He said the Romanos owed us ports for what happened to our family.
Who is them, Dominic asked.
She looked toward the library.
Then she stopped herself.
I cannot, she said.
If I say his name in this house, someone will tell him before nightfall.
That was not the confession Dominic wanted.
It was more dangerous than a confession.
It meant Enzo had ears inside these walls.
Dominic ordered Frank to keep Celeste in the guest wing.
No phone.
No visitors.
No father.
She stood to leave and then turned to me.
I never wanted Salvatore hurt, she said.
You held the bottle, I answered.
Wanting is not the same as stopping.
She flinched as if I had struck her.
I felt no satisfaction.
I felt tired in a way sleep would not fix.
That afternoon I drove home to collect clothes and my own medications.
Dominic insisted on sending a driver.
I refused like a foolish independent woman.
I told him my little house in Queens had survived forty-eight years of real life without an escort.
He let me go only after Frank checked my car that morning.
The drive home was quiet.
October light fell thin across the expressway.
I called Emma from a parking lot near my street.
She laughed about a biology exam and a roommate who burned pasta.
Her normal life sounded like music from another country.
I did not tell her about sedatives or forged signatures.
I told her I might stay at the estate for a few extra nights.
She asked if the old man was worse.
I said he was finally being believed.
That was true enough to live with.
My house smelled like lemon cleaner and closed rooms.
I packed a bag the way nurses pack, fast and without sentiment.
Toothbrush.
Sweater.
Charger.
Photograph of my husband Michael that I never travel without.
I locked up and started the car.
The brake pedal felt soft at the end of my street.
I told myself I was imagining things because powerful men had filled my head with poison.
At the second stop sign the pedal sank farther.
At the third light my heart was hammering.
I steered toward a wide grocery store parking lot and pumped the brakes.
Nothing held.
The car rolled faster toward a concrete barrier.
I yanked the emergency brake with both hands.
The rear tires screamed.
The car spun half a circle and slammed sideways into a shopping cart corral.
Metal shrieked.
My head snapped against the window.
A bag boy ran toward me shouting for someone to call for help.
I sat shaking with my hands still locked on the brake.
Through the cracked windshield I saw fluid pooling dark beneath my car.
Even before the mechanic arrived, I knew.
Later Frank stood in that parking lot with his jaw clenched so tight it hurt to look at him.
Brake line cut clean, the mechanic told him.
Not worn.
Cut.
Someone wanted me frightened at minimum.
Someone wanted me dead at worst.
Dominic arrived twenty minutes later in a black SUV.
He did not send men.
He came himself.
He opened my passenger door and looked at the blood on my forehead where the window had kissed me.
Grace, he said.
I am fine, I lied automatically.
Nurses lie like that so other people can breathe.
You are not fine, he said.
Your car was cut because you kept a log book.
He helped me out with a gentleness that startled us both.
You and Emma are under my protection now, he said.
Emma is in college three hours away, I protested.
Frank already has two people on her dorm, he said.
They will watch without scaring her.
You will stay at the estate until I know who cut that line.
I wanted to argue about independence and boundaries and normal life.
Then I looked at my ruined car.
Normal life had left the parking lot without me.
I nodded.
Dominic picked up my packed bag himself.
As we drove away my phone vibrated with an unknown number.
I answered before Dominic could stop me.
A man breathed once on the line.
Then he used a voice I will hear in my sleep for years.
Grace Miller, he said.
Good nurses know when to stop writing things down.
The call ended.
Dominic took the phone from my shaking hand.
He looked at the number and went utterly cold.
That is not an unknown number, he said.
That number belonged to Adrian.
May you like
It was disconnected twelve years ago.
And someone had just used it to threaten me from beyond a grave that Salvatore kept insisting we open.
