Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Fifty-Five

I was sitting in Desmond’s living room in Charlestown with him and Felix and Richie.

I was well aware that Desmond would never have agreed to see me on his own. I knew Richie had brought some sort of force to bear.

“The thing of it is this,” I said to Desmond. “We’ve gone over this before. I don’t believe in coincidence, and neither does Richie and neither do you.”

“Who does?” Felix said.

Now the pictures of Maria Cataldo and the boy and a young Richie Burke were on the stump coffee table in front of the Burkes.

“This proves nothing,” Desmond said.

“Dad,” Richie said.

“It is my unproven assertion that the boy in the picture with Maria is her son,” I said. “And yours.”

“Goddamn it, now you’re just being ridiculous!” Felix Burke said to me, with surprising force.

“Ridiculous,” Desmond said, “because of an unfounded theory.”

“Working on that,” I said. “The unproven part.”

“Why won’t you leave this be?” Desmond said.

He stared at me with eyes as dark as coal. He did not look angry. Just terribly old. As old as all of this.

As old as the photographs on the table.

“I don’t leave things be,” I said.

“This family is no longer your family,” Desmond said.

“But he is,” I said, nodding at Richie.

“Dad,” Richie said, sounding tired himself. “You have to admit that it is possible that Maria left when she did and the way she did because she was pregnant with your child.”

“Many things are possible,” Desmond said, “but turn out not to be so.”

“But if she was pregnant,” I said, “you are telling us you didn’t know?”

“I did not,” he said. “But would I have wanted to know? Of course.”

Felix Burke said, “Sunny, you think that somehow the boy in that picture is the one who has come after us this way?”

Felix looked older, too, except for his slicked-back black hair, which remained forever young.

“It is the only thing that makes sense,” I said.

“For what reason?” Desmond said.

“I plan to ask him that when I find him,” I said.

“It is now my turn to ask you to walk away from this,” Felix Burke said. “I know you will never walk away from Richard. But walk away from Desmond and me. I’ve never asked you for anything, Sunny. I’m asking you now. Give it up.”

“I can’t,” I said.

Then I told him and told Desmond about Maria having been back in Providence for years, living in a house owned by Albert Antonioni.

Desmond looked at Richie. “You knew this?”

Richie nodded.

“And didn’t tell me?”

“I promised Sunny I wouldn’t,” Richie said. “And I was raised to keep my word.”

“I’m your father,” Desmond said.

“And I’m your son,” Richie said, “sometimes in ways I’m not sure even I fully comprehend.”

We all sat there. It occurred to me how much of my life had been spent in the company of hard men like these. Sunny and the boys.

I asked Desmond again when Maria had left Boston. He told me. Richie said, “The boy in that picture would be about my age.”

To no one Desmond said, “All this time, she was an hour away.”

“But gone now,” Felix said, as if putting out a fire that had not yet begun. “Another reason it is time for all of us to let go. We live in the past enough, Desmond, you and me.”

“But it means he knows things about her that I do not,” Desmond said.

He looked at me, perhaps because I was the only woman in the room.

“If she came back,” he said, “why would she come back to him?”

“I’m going to ask this again,” I said. “When Albert and Maria were younger, could they have had a relationship that she kept from you?”

“No,” he said. He spit out the word. “In those days, when we were together, she just used to joke that I better treat her right, because if I were out of the picture, she would not lack for attention.”

He closed his eyes. “But I did treat her right,” he said.

When he opened his eyes finally, he was once again staring at me.

“You honestly think he might be the one trying to kill me?” Desmond said.

No one said anything until Richie said, “Our father.”