Chapter 3 - THE FLOWER ON HIS KEYS
“Where did you get that?”
The room went silent.
Dominic looked at his keys.
“This?”
“The flower.”
Aunt Sofia lowered her fork.
Michael stopped chewing.
Nicholas did not move.
Dominic turned the brass charm between his fingers.
“Old thing.”
“It belonged to my brother.”
That changed the table.
Dominic looked at Nicholas.
Not me.
Nicholas’s voice was quiet.
“Answer her.”
His uncle sighed.
“Sam gave it to me.”
“When?”
I asked.
“Last year.”
“Why?”
“He needed a favor.”
Nicholas leaned back.
“You never mentioned that.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because at the time, it wasn’t important.”
I almost laughed.
“My brother died.”
Dominic looked at me.
“And I am sorry.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
His expression hardened slightly.
For the first time, warmth left his face.
“Your brother was frightened.”
“So everybody keeps telling me.”
“He asked me for a car.”
“Why?”
“He said he needed to get out of Boston for two days.”
Nicholas stared at him.
“You gave him one?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he wouldn’t tell me what he had done.”
I pointed toward the brass flower.
“Then how did you get that?”
“He left his keys on my desk.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Dominic frowned.
“No?”
“Sam never left that charm anywhere.”
“You haven’t lived with him since he was nineteen.”
“I knew my brother.”
Aunt Sofia whispered, “Clara…”
I looked at her.
She stopped.
Nicholas said, “When was this?”
Dominic named a date.
My stomach dropped.
Six days before Sam died.
Nicholas’s expression changed too.
“You told me you hadn’t seen him for months.”
Dominic looked irritated.
“I forgot one conversation.”
“A conversation where a frightened man asked you for a car?”
“Yes.”
Nicholas’s voice became colder.
“You don’t forget things.”
Dominic looked at him.
“Careful.”
One word.
Not threatening.
Warning.
The kind only an older man could use with someone who had once been a boy under his authority.
Nicholas’s face became unreadable.
“This is my table.”
Dominic almost smiled.
“It used to be your father’s.”
“And tonight it’s mine.”
Nobody breathed.
Then Dominic removed the key ring.
He placed the brass flower beside my plate.
“If it was Sam’s, take it.”
I stared at it.
So simple.
Too simple.
“Why keep it?”
Dominic shrugged.
“I liked it.”
My anger rose.
“You liked something that belonged to a dead man?”
“I didn’t know he would die.”
The words were reasonable.
That made them worse.
Nicholas stood.
“Dinner is over.”
Aunt Sofia looked relieved.
Michael looked disappointed, as though he had expected dessert.
Dominic remained seated.
“Nicholas.”
“Tomorrow.”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“Then tomorrow will be easy.”
Dominic looked at me.
For one second, I saw something behind his eyes.
Not fear.
Grief.
That unsettled me more.
Then he stood, kissed Sofia’s cheek, and left.
I held the brass flower in my palm.
There was a scratch near one petal.
I had made that scratch when I was seventeen.
Sam had stolen my bike.
I threw the keys at him.
I missed his head.
Hit the sidewalk.
He called me “Clara Nolan Ryan” for six months.
I started crying before I realized it.
Quietly.
Humiliatingly.
Nicholas saw.
He didn’t touch me.
He simply moved the water glass closer.
“I’m going home,” I said.
“You are home.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“This is your house.”
Something in his face shifted.
“Fair.”
He drove me to the flower shop himself.
No driver.
No conversation.
At the curb, he said, “Two men will remain outside.”
“I don’t want them in the shop.”
“They won’t enter.”
“I may stay all night.”
“So will they.”
I got out.
Then stopped.
“Nicholas.”
“Yes?”
“Do you believe him?”
A long pause.
“I want to.”
Not yes.
That mattered.
Inside, I locked the door and turned on every light.
I placed Sam’s brass flower beside the green ledger.
Then I searched.
Not the ledger.
My mother’s old cabinets.
Sam had worked at the shop on Saturdays when he was sixteen.
He hid candy behind ribbon boxes.
Baseball cards beneath seed catalogs.
A girlfriend’s photograph inside a funeral-arrangement binder because he knew Mom would never open it.
My brother believed the safest hiding place was something boring.
At midnight, I found nothing.
At one, nothing.
At one-thirty, I made coffee.
At two, I remembered the brass flower.
Mom had three key rings.
But only Sam’s had another key attached.
A tiny flat one.
Not for a car.
Not for the shop.
I looked at Dominic’s ring again.
The small key was gone.
My hands started shaking.
I searched every drawer.
Then the old filing cabinet.
Then Sam’s childhood desk upstairs.
At 2:41, I found a locked metal cash box beneath a stack of Christmas decorations.
The lock was tiny.
Flat.
I stared at it.
Of course.
I tried the brass flower’s ring.
No extra key.
Dominic had removed it.
Maybe years ago.
Maybe last week.
I picked up my mother’s florist shears.
The box was old.
The hinge was weaker than the lock.
Five minutes later, one side bent enough for me to reach inside.
Photographs.
No cash.
No secret fortune.
Just photographs.
Sam at twenty-three.
Mom at the shop.
Me with braces.
Then one photograph I had never seen.
Sam stood on the Boston waterfront beside three men.
Anthony Corsetti.
I recognized him from newspaper photographs.
Nicholas.
Younger by a few years.
And Dominic.
Four men.
One dock.
On the back, Sam had written:
THEY ALL SAY THEY WEREN’T THERE.
ONE OF THEM IS LYING.
My stomach tightened.
The photograph was dated two years earlier.
Nicholas had told me he barely knew Sam before the restaurant meeting.
But there he was.
Standing beside him.
I heard a key turn downstairs.
I grabbed the shears.
Footsteps.
“Nicholas?”
“Clara.”
His voice.
I walked to the staircase.
“You said you didn’t have another key.”
“I don’t.”
I looked down.
He stood behind the locked glass door.
Outside.
Not inside.
He lifted one hand.
“You called Rosa.”
I had forgotten.
At some point near one-thirty, I had asked her whether Nicholas kept old harbor photographs in the house.
She had obviously told him.
I went downstairs but did not unlock the door.
I held up the photograph through the glass.
Nicholas’s face changed.
“You said Sam came to you nineteen days before he died.”
“He did.”
“You made it sound like that was the first time.”
“It was the first time we spoke alone.”
“Don’t do that.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Do what?”
“Answer technically so you don’t have to admit you lied.”
He absorbed that.
Then nodded.
“You’re right.”
I unlocked the door.
He stepped inside.
I handed him the photograph.
“Explain.”
He studied it.
“I had forgotten this.”
I laughed.
“You too?”
“Yes.”
“Apparently my brother was surrounded by men with very selective memory.”
Nicholas looked at the date.
Then toward the green ledger.
“This was the annual dockworkers’ fundraiser.”
“You stood beside Sam.”
“For a photograph.”
“Did Dominic know him?”
Nicholas looked at the image longer.
“Apparently better than he admitted.”
I pointed toward Anthony Corsetti.
“And him?”
“He sponsored a union scholarship that year.”
“You expect me to believe Boston’s mafia went to charity events?”
“We also pay taxes.”
I stared.
He almost smiled.
I did not.
“Why would Sam hide this?”
Nicholas turned the photograph over again.
His face changed.
“What?”
I asked.
He showed me.
Beneath Sam’s note, almost invisible in pencil, was another line.
Not words.
A license plate.
Nicholas knew it immediately.
“Whose?”
He did not answer.
“Nicholas.”
May you like
His eyes lifted.
“Dominic’s.”
