Peril

TONY

He couldn’t stop thinking about Sara, about the fact that if something really had happened to Eddie, then she was in more danger than he could possibly have imagined. Before now he’d feared that one of his father’s goons might strong-arm her. It might stop at intimidation, or it might involve grabbing her arm and giving it a painful squeeze. All of that would be wrong, he knew, and none of it would ultimately work. You didn’t keep a wife that way. Well, some people did. His cousin Donny kept Carla that way. And, of course, his father had ruled with the same iron fist. But he did not want to be his father, or have a wife who lived with him the way his mother had lived with the Old Man, cringing, terrified, reduced to shadow, a mere reflection of her dread. He wanted Sara the way she was when he’d first met her. He wanted the young woman who’d stood alone before an old piano and sung her heart out. Her courage astonished him suddenly, the sheer grit she’d had to have just to do what she’d done that night. He had taken that brave young woman, so perfect, and chipped away at that perfection, coaxing her to the suburbs, reducing her to baby factory-or at least trying to-and then, when no babies came, he’d rubbed her face in this failure, as if she were the one who’d done everything wrong, she the one who’d ruined his life.

He went to his car and drove away, leaving his employees to fend for themselves. Suddenly it didn’t matter if they came in late, lay down on the job, misplaced some form, or sent a load of fish to the wrong restaurant. He’d run the business the way he’d run his marriage, under the sword of his father’s instruction. You have to show the people who work for you that you’ve got the muscle, his old man had told him. You have to show that woman who’s boss.

And so he’d done that, Tony thought. For sixteen years he’d worn the pants, laid down the law, gotten his way. And now he’d reached the end of the way he’d gotten, the barren crossroads of his life.

He drove aimlessly along Sunset Highway, all the way to Montauk Point, where he stood on the beach and watched the waves tumble one after another onto the vacant shore.

It was noon by the time he returned home. He hadn’t intended to go there. There were bars and diners where he could have sat through the afternoon, the night, even the early-morning hours. And yet, here he was, staring at the empty house, the gray, cheerless windows, imagining the bedroom where she’d never sleep again. But dire as that reality was, it was not nearly so dark as what might yet happen to Sara. He knew that she’d wanted only to leave him. She’d taken not a dime of his money. She’d left the Ford Explorer in the driveway. What else could her message have been but that she wanted nothing of him and nothing of his. She had wanted only to be rid of him and had probably never guessed that anyone else might be looking for her. Certainly she would not have dreamed that the Old Man would have hired some thug and set him loose like a dog in the woods.

Something moved behind his car. He twisted to the rear and peered through the back window, where he saw Della coming toward him.

“Hi, Della,” Tony said as he got out of the car.

A thin smile labored to hold its place on her lips, then expired. “I need to talk to you, Tony.”

“You want to come inside?”

She shook her head.

“Okay,” Tony said. “What’s on your mind?”