“Maria?”

For some reason he waited for her to answer. He always did.

“I should have told you this before, but I got some bad news.”

He watched her face for the smallest change. There wasn’t. There hadn’t been in a very long time. Del let his eyes wander around the room. If appearances meant anything, you’d never guess that they were in a hospital. Sure, there was that constant beeping from the medical equipment and the dull hospital background noise. But Del had transformed this room. He brought in all Maria’s old favorite things—the stuffed bear he’d won for her at Six Flags when Carlton was six, the ornate Navajo rug they’d bought on that vacation to Santa Fe, the dartboard they’d hung up in the basement of that old house on Drexel Avenue.

Del had surrounded Maria with old photographs too—their wedding picture, their first Christmas with Carlton, Carlton’s graduation from Parkview preschool. His favorite photograph had been taken at Atlantic City Mini Golf, right on the Boardwalk by Mississippi Avenue. He and Maria had gone there often. There were bronze statues of children at play throughout the course. Maria had liked that—like it was a visit to a museum and mini golf place all in one. Maria had made a hole-in-one on the last hole, and the cashier, the same guy who’d asked them what color ball they wanted to use, came out and took this photograph, and the way the two of them were smiling you’d think they won a trip to Hawaii rather than a free game.

Del stared at that picture now and then slowly turned back to Maria. “It’s about Carlton.”

No response.

Eighteen months ago, a drunk driver had run a red light and smashed into Maria’s car. It had been late at night. She had been driving alone to pick up a prescription at the all-night pharmacy for Carlton. That was what single women did, he guessed. If she’d still been married to Del, if she hadn’t been so damned stubborn and forgiven him, she would have never been out that late driving and she’d be fine and they’d be fine and they’d still be going to that mini golf place and then playing a few hands at Caesars or getting a steak at Gallagher’s or splitting a funnel cake on the Boardwalk. But he’d blown it a long time ago.

“He’s missing,” Del said, tears coming to his eyes. “No one knows what happened to him. The cops are on it, but you know that’s not enough. So I hired some people. You know the kind. You probably wouldn’t approve, except when it came to your boy, you’d kill, right?”

Again no answer. The doctors had explained that there was no hope. She was brain-dead. They had encouraged him to let her go. Others had done the same in both gentle and forceful tones. Maria’s sister had even tried to sue to become medical proxy, but Maria had named him and so she lost. Everyone wanted to pull the plug. Making her live like this, day after day, month after month, heck, maybe year after year, was cruel, they claimed.

But Del couldn’t let her go.

Not yet. Not until she forgave him. He begged her every day for forgiveness. He begged her to come back to him, to let them be what they were, what they always should have been. In short, he said all the things he should have said before the accident.

Some days Del actually thought that redemption was possible. Some days he thought that Maria would open her eyes and she would see all that he’d done for her, all the sacrifice, all the devotion. She would have heard all the words he’d said during his visits to her bedside, and she would forgive him. But most days, like right now, he knew that would never be. He knew that what he was doing was indeed cruel and that he should let her go, and move on with his life. He and Maria had been divorced now for longer than they were married. Del had been married twice since. He was with Darya now.

Then other days—rare days but they were there—Del wondered whether he intentionally held on to her out of spite. Maria had never forgiven him and that ruined everything. Maybe, subconsciously, he was angry with her. Maybe keeping her alive was payback. God, he hoped not, but some days he couldn’t shake the feeling this was all nothing but a grand selfish gesture.

Del wasn’t good at letting go. He couldn’t let go of the only woman he ever loved.

And he couldn’t—would never—let go of his son.

“I’m going to find him, Maria. I will find him and I will bring him here and when you see him, I mean, really, when your boy is back home and safe…”

There wasn’t more to say. He sat next to her and fingered the Saint Anthony medal. He loved this medal. He never took it off. A few weeks back, he’d noticed that Carlton wasn’t wearing his. His son had replaced it with some crappy two-bit dog tags like he’d really been in the military or something, and, man, when Del saw that he hit the roof. How dare he? The idea of his son replacing his Saint Anthony medal, the one his sainted mother had given him, for those poser dog tags, had enraged Del. When Carlton shrugged and countered that he liked the dog tags, that his friends all wore them, that they looked “cool,” Del had come close to hitting his son. “Your grandfather wore dog tags while storming Normandy, and believe me, he never thought they were cool!” Del’s real name was, in fact, Delano, named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his parents’ hero. Carlton walked away then, but when he went out that night, Del noticed with some pride that the Saint Anthony medal was back around his neck—along with the dog tags.

The kid was learning the art of compromise.

When Del’s cell phone rang—Darya had recently made the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” his ringtone—he snatched it up quickly. The song, with its famed “Tonight’s gonna be a good night” chorus, felt particularly obscene in here. He put the phone to his ear and said, “Flynn.”

“It’s Goldberg.”

Del Flynn heard something strange in the cop’s tone. Normally Goldberg was strictly seen-it-all bored, but he seemed strangely agitated now. “You got news?”

“Do you know what those two lunatics of yours did?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“The hell it’s not. It’s one thing to rough up a whore, but this guy was a—”

“Hey,” Flynn said, cutting him off. “You really want to share your concerns over a phone line?”

Silence.

“It’s a mess,” Goldberg said.

Flynn didn’t much care. He only cared about one thing: finding Carlton. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll clean up the mess.”