He swallows, looks confused.
I raise the revolver, and he backs in.
“Just tell me if Aleksio is back,” he says.
“He’s back.” I set the file on the counter. “Look familiar?”
He just turns and heads through his home.
Don’t I have the gun? I follow him across his place and into his bedroom. He pulls a suitcase from his closet. “I’m glad to see you alive, Mira,” he says.
“You going somewhere?”
“If Aleksio Dragusha’s still alive? Yeah, I’ll be going somewhere, and you should get the fuck out too. You’re the best way for him to hurt your father.” He pulls out a small carry-on. Already packed. A go bag.
“Tell me about this report.”
“Can I ask you one thing first? Are any brothers with him?”
Like hell I’m going to tell him that—especially not that Kiro is alive. If anybody is innocent in all of this, it’s Kiro.
He pulls socks out of a drawer and tosses them onto the bed. “I’m just asking because, if the brothers are together, the fire will rain down from the skies. You know that, right?”
“You’re talking about that prophecy? Why does everybody believe that thing?”
“Because everybody else believes it,” he says. “Why do stock markets collapse? Because everybody thinks everybody else is freaking. Why does everybody believe the Kardashians are somebody? Because everybody else believes it. Are the brothers united?”
“I have the gun here. I’m the one who gets the answers.”
He’s throwing clothes into the suitcase. “You’re a Nikolla. Get out of town. Get out of this thing.” He stops and looks up. “Everyone knows you hate guns.”
“Maybe I hate lies more.”
He goes back to his packing. It’s like he doesn’t even care that I have a gun. “You need to give me a head start.”
“Tell me what happened with my mother.”
He slows in his packing, but he doesn’t turn.
“Talk to me or I’ll shoot something. I swear it. I won’t shoot you, but I’ll shoot something, and then the police will come.”
He turns, finally. “What do you want to know?”
“Was she killed? Poisoned? Is that report accurate?”
“I felt it was.”
“You were paid to change it.”
He frowns. “Shit.”
“By who?”
“Who do you think?”
“My father?” I try for a steady voice. “Did he kill her?”
He stuffs a balled pair of socks into his case. “That wasn’t for me to know. I changed the findings. That was my part.”
“Paid by my father.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about what they found in her. Tell me what killed her.”
“Designer pharma.”
“He made you cover it up. He was either responsible or complicit.”
Jashari keeps packing.
My heart feels like it’s cracking apart. Us against the world. Dad and me. A family. Even learning about what he did to Aleksio’s family, there was this tiny part of me that held on to Dad being a good guy. Even when he withheld that last lead until he thought my finger was gone, I held on.
“So you just let them get away with it.” My own rage sounds weird to my ears.
“Yes,” he says. “They paid me to let them get away with it. The DA who ordered the autopsy was found in pieces. So yeah, they paid me, but I probably would have helped if he simply asked me. And I think you know why—I have children, grandchildren. You know what your father is. This isn’t a good time to be in denial.”
“I’m not in denial. Excuse me if—” Excuse me if I just found out my father probably killed my mother. I think of the way they used to fight. The secrecy. The whispers. I know from my job that the child needs to believe in the goodness of the parent. The love of the parent. Even in the worst cases of abuse, they create fictions. Somehow the parent loves them.
I wipe angry tears from my cheeks. “Did you help him fake the deaths of the Dragusha boys?”
“I’m done talking. Shoot me if you need to.”
Of course he did. He asked whether the brothers are together; it means he knows they’re all alive. “I guess I should be happy my dad didn’t have the balls to kill infants.”
“He does love you,” Jashari says.
I feel as hollow as his words.
“You’re upset. Just get out of town.” He goes to a closet and yanks out a tennis racket. “Go far. That’s the best and last advice I give you. If Aleksio had you, I don’t know how you got away. But you did. Take this chance and go.” He shoves it into his case. “Aleksio wouldn’t come back around if he wasn’t here for blood. This is where you save yourself.”
“Like you.”
“My name’s on their death certificates. They’ll see that sooner or later and figure it was me who put the sand in their caskets. They’re going to want to bring down everyone who was connected with taking their family and their birthright.” He leaves the room and comes back with a steaming mug of coffee. “You take cream?”
I barely understand the question.
He puts the mug in my hand and zips up his bag. “I’m out of here. You need to clear your head and make your move. You can stay here a while, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” He glances at his phone.
I stare at the folder. “I thought he loved her.”
“He loved you,” the man says. “You were a beautiful girl. Such a good girl. They both loved you.”
“She loved me.”
Jashari leaves me standing in his kitchen. Just walks out the back door.
They say you only become truly adult when you’ve lost both of your parents.
I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s more like you become truly adult when you’ve lost your illusions about your parents.
There’s nothing I want to do more than confront my father. To rage at him and make him face me and tell me the truth. I always thought Bloody Lazarus was the psycho, but Dad covered up the truth of Mom’s death. Somebody killed my mother, and my own father helped them get away with it. Or worse—he killed her. Could he have done it? The question turns me inside out.
And deep down I know the answer is yes. He probably did.
I find an unopened box of corn flakes on the counter and pretty much suck them down. I’m in a state of shock.
Confronting him would be reckless. I can’t be reckless now.
Tito’s phone vibrates at one point—it comes up as A. I’m sure that means Aleksio. Aleksio calling Tito. I don’t answer. Are they back yet?
I get back in the BMW around lunchtime and drive. I don’t know where I’m going until I find myself at the graveyard. I buy daisies at the little stand outside the cemetery, and I go and tuck them into the side of Mom’s grave and settle in on my usual spot right in front of the stone, right up close. I pick up a fallen maple leaf, brilliant orange, and set it next to the daisies.
“Mom.” I put my palm to the gravestone. I feel so raw, like I’ve lost her all over again, and so full of rage for Dad it makes me queasy. Could he have had a hand in it? Even going near the question in my mind makes me feel physically ill.