I'm grateful for it.

And I respect him.

Even if it isn't mutual.

"Who was she?" he asks, crossing his thick arms over his broad chest.

"Who?"

"That girl you brought here."

I regard him curiously. "She didn't look familiar to you?"

"She did," he says, "that's why I'm asking. She's got one of those faces, you know, and you don't forget a face like that, ever. Used to walk in the front door of the deli after school every day, looking for one of your mother's cookies. Such a sweet face… haven't seen it in a long time because of you."

He blames me, naturally.

I started it all, set up the dominos to eventually fall.

Had I not stolen from Ray's shop that day, he wouldn't have offered me that job, and Johnny and Carmela probably would've never even crossed his path. I met Maria the first time I walked into her father's house at sixteen years old, and it was through me that she met the rest of them.

I was the center of it all, and my father knows it.

I was a damaged nucleus.

He always believed I was too weak to hold anyone else together.

The day of my wife's funeral, my father walked up to me, grasped my hands tightly, looked me dead in the eyes, and said, "rats will always desert a sinking ship, Ignazio."

I thought, at first, it was compassion. I thought he was sympathizing that my friend turned on me. It wasn't until later that I realized it was a swipe at the person I'd become instead.

I was a sinking ship.

He didn't blame Johnny for running for his life.

He didn't blame them for jumping overboard.

He blamed me for going under.

"She's their daughter," I say. "Johnny and Carmela's."

"Does she know who you are?"

"Yes."

"Then why's she with you?"

It's a damn good question. I don't know how to answer. I could list a dozen reasons she might be with me but it would amount to nothing in the way of explanation. At the end of the day, she's with me because she has to be. Compared to that, the rest means nothing.

If she could've left long ago, she would've, and I think she still might if she ever gets an opening.

Shaking his head at my silence, he turns away from me and picks up the knife again as he sets back to work. "I wish I could say I'm surprised, surprised you'd drag that girl into your mess, but I'm not. Your mother, though... your mother would be devastated. Disappointed. Disgusted. You can destroy yourself all you want. I don't care. I'm done caring. You want to be one of those schmucks who calls himself a man but lives like a thug, you do that, but you do that away from me, and away from your mother, and you especially do that away from innocent little girls."

I'm glad he's not looking at me, because his choice of words makes me grimace. "She's not a little girl."

"Yeah? How old is she?"

"Nineteen."

He laughs. Laughs. "I remember you at that age. Running the streets, thinking you were a man... a big man... but you were no man. You were a little boy with a gun and a grudge, thinking you had it all figured out. But I'll tell you—you didn't. You still don't. You never grew up, and look at you. Look at you!" He doesn't look at me, but I can only imagine what he'd see if he did, the wall holding me up as I clutch my wounded side. It's throbbing. "I heard you got shot again. One of the neighbors heard about it, told your mother. I thought she was going to have a stroke!"

"It was nothing," I say. "I'm fine."

I feel like I've said that a hundred times this past week.

"You look like death," he says. "You're taking yourself down again, you're going under, and you're going to take that girl with you if you're not careful. And that certainly doesn't make you a man, Ignazio."

It's nothing he hasn't said before, but I caught him early enough in the morning that the harshness hasn't taken over. What I hear now is exhaustion with a hint of concern.

The concern is for Karissa.

He's just plain tired of me.

"You know, I didn't come here for a lecture."

"You shouldn't have come here at all," he says. "I told you you're not welcome. You're trespassing right now."

"You gonna call the police? On your son?"

"My son's dead," he says, matter-of-fact. "He died on the streets when he was just a kid. I don't know why you come around, why you're even here right now."

"Yeah," I mutter. "I don't know either."

I consider leaving when he turns around, pointing the knife at me. There's no threat to it. He's just trying to make a point, trying to get my attention. "You care about that girl?"

"Yes."

"Remember what happened the last time you cared about one."

He turns back away from me, and I know he's said all he's going to say. If I don't walk back out the door right now, he'll call the police. He will.

And I can't let it get that far.

I can't do that to my mother.

My father gave up on me long ago.

My mother's the lingering hope that maybe I'm not all hopeless.

"It's infected."

I move my forearm from across my eyes and glare at the man standing over me. Dr. Carter. I don't like people in my house. I don't invite people in my house. But yet here the man is, standing in my den again.