Chapter 1 - THE NAME IN THE STEW
“Rosa.”
The spoon stopped halfway between Gabriel Hayes’s mouth and the bowl.
For several seconds, nobody inside Benny’s Diner moved.
Rain hammered the windows. The old refrigerator hummed behind the kitchen doors. One of Gabriel’s men shifted his hand closer to the gun beneath his jacket.
I stared at Gabriel.
“What did you say?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
They were different now.
Not softer.
More dangerous.
“Who taught you to make this?”
I swallowed. “A woman named Rosa.”
Leo’s face changed.
Gabriel stood so quickly the table shook.
“Last name.”
“I don’t know.”
“You lived with her?”
“No. She watched me when I was a kid.”
“Where?”
“South End. Calder Street. Apartment 4B.”
Gabriel went completely still.
Leo whispered, “Boss…”
Gabriel raised one hand, silencing him.
I suddenly realized everyone except me understood something.
“What?” I asked. “Why does that address matter?”
Gabriel stepped out of the booth.
Eight days without food had weakened him, but the room still seemed to shrink around him.
“Describe her.”
I tried to remember.
“She was maybe fifty when I knew her. Italian accent. Dark hair with gray streaks. She wore a silver medal around her neck. She hated canned tomatoes. She said people who put sugar in sauce should be arrested.”
Leo made a strange sound that might have been a laugh if he hadn’t looked terrified.
Gabriel didn’t smile.
“What medal?”
“A saint. I think.”
His voice became almost inaudible.
“Saint Christopher?”
My stomach tightened.
“Yes.”
Gabriel turned away.
He gripped the edge of the table.
I had expected violence.
Instead, he looked as though somebody had punched a hole straight through his chest.
“That woman,” he said, “died twenty-six years ago.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“I attended her funeral.”
“You’re wrong.”
His head snapped toward me.
“I buried my mother.”
The diner fell silent again.
My mouth went dry.
Rosa had never told me her last name.
Never mentioned a son named Gabriel.
But suddenly I remembered something else.
A photograph.
When I was ten, I had accidentally knocked an old cookbook from Rosa’s shelf. A faded picture had fallen from between the pages.
It showed Rosa standing beside a dark-haired teenage boy.
I had asked who he was.
She grabbed the photograph from my hand and said only:
“Someone I failed.”
I looked at Gabriel now.
The same eyes.
The same jaw.
The same slight scar above the left eyebrow.
“Oh my God.”
Gabriel noticed my expression.
“What?”
“I’ve seen you before.”
His men moved closer.
I stepped backward.
“In a photograph. Rosa had it.”
Gabriel’s breathing changed.
“Where is that photograph?”
“I don’t know. Rosa disappeared when I was twelve.”
His face hardened.
“You said she watched you.”
“She did.”
“You said she was alive.”
“She was.”
“Then whose funeral did I attend?”
Nobody had an answer.
Then Benny slowly emerged from the kitchen carrying an old cardboard box.
His hands were shaking.
“Maybe,” he whispered, “I do.”
Gabriel turned.
Benny placed the box on the counter.
On the top was an envelope yellowed with age.
May you like
Across the front, written in faded blue ink, were four words:
FOR GABRIEL, WHEN HE COMES.
