Little Secrets(102)

Castro is back, and she stands in front of Marin and Derek. Without preamble, she says, “Sal has a gun. He shot his mother.”

“Sal shot Lorna?” Marin can hardly believe it. Lorna wouldn’t hurt a fly, and she adored her son. Plus, she’s barely mobile, from what Sal’s told her. Why in the world would Sal hurt his mother? “That’s not possible.”

“He shot her in the arm, and she told the police that it was an accident,” Castro says. “He was looking for his father’s gun, and when he realized she had it, he tried to take it from her. They wrestled, and the gun went off.”

Marin looks over at Derek. If he’s heard all this, he hasn’t reacted. He’s standing there, motionless, lost in all the commotion. He’s gone numb. She doesn’t blame him. She will, too, once this is all over. Just a little longer.

“Where are they now?” she asks Castro.

“Lorna is at the hospital. They tried to ask her if she knew anything about Sebastian, but she couldn’t tell them. When she was struggling with Sal for the gun, she hit her head, and it exacerbated her previous head injury. She’s a mess. Barely coherent.”

“If Lorna’s at the hospital, where’s Sal?”

“He’s still in the house. He let the paramedics take his mother, but he’s refusing to come out. Marin…” Castro hesitates. “Sal says he’ll only talk to you.”

“No way,” Derek says, sparking back to life. They’re the first words he’s spoken in the last hour. “Not happening.”

“I want to talk to him,” Marin says. “I need to know where Sebastian is, and he’s the only one here who knows.”

Derek grabs her arm, incredulous. “Marin, no. He’s dangerous. You can’t go in there—”

“She doesn’t have to go anywhere.” Castro turns to an FBI agent and waves him over. “You can use the phone.”



* * *



They position her where she can see him.

Sal’s upstairs in his old bedroom, looking out through the window. Marin is near the tree swing, about fifty feet away, seated on the passenger side of a police car. She’s asked for privacy, and they’ve allowed her to sit in the car by herself, though two officers are standing guard right beside it. They wouldn’t let her use her own phone, because they want the call recorded, so she speaks into a phone the FBI agent handed her a moment ago.

She can see Sal pacing on the other side of the window, the muzzle of the gun he’s holding pointed at his own head. With his free hand, he answers his phone on the first ring.

“You alive?” she says.

He stops moving, and looks out his window and into hers. She can barely see his face. His room is dim. But she can make out the shape of him, and she waves from inside the car. He waves back.

“For now,” he says with a dark laugh.

“Why, Sal?” she asks in a soft voice.

“It was never supposed to be like this, Mar, I swear.” Sal’s voice is shaking. “I needed the money. The plan was to keep Sebastian for a day, maybe two, until Derek paid the ransom, but the cops and the FBI were crawling all over the fucking place, so I had no choice but to lay low. I brought him here so my mom could take care of him. I told her Derek was abusive, just like Dad, and that we needed to keep Sabastian safe. She believed me. We decided—”

“‘We’? You and Julian?”

“Yeah. We decided to wait until it all died down. Which it did, after a month. We sent Derek the ransom demand, after you got out of the hospital. But we were delayed in getting back to the meet-up spot. And when Julian talked to Derek, I heard him shouting. And Sebastian was crying. And I just … I got mad. Your husband has always been such a self-entitled prick and I guess I wanted to hurt him. So we hung up the phone, and a few minutes later, I told Derek his son was dead.”

Marin can’t speak. Tears pour down her face. Sal laughs again, and it’s the most bitter sound in the world.

“What’s crazy is he didn’t tell you,” Sal says. “Out of all the ways I thought this could go, I never imagined he wouldn’t tell you, that he’d keep it all a secret. He didn’t say a fucking word. To you, or to anyone.”

“He thought I’d try to kill myself again.” Marin braces herself for the next question. The hardest question. “Sal, where is my son?”

“I want you to know that I love you,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’ve loved you from the minute we met—”

“Sal, please. Where is my son?”

“He’s in the wine cellar.”

She takes a quick breath. “Is he alive or dead?”

A pause. Five seconds, ten seconds, she doesn’t know, but it feels like an eternity. Then finally, two words, so quiet she almost doesn’t catch them.

“He’s okay.”

Marin opens the police car door and shouts, “Wine cellar!” at the top of her lungs, but they already know, because they already heard, and they’re already moving.

“What’s sad, Sal, is I would have given you the money,” she says into the phone. “If you were in trouble, I would have helped you. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. You’re my best friend. All you had to do was ask.”