“It happened on Valentine’s Day,” I said, breaking the silence. I had gotten a card from Will Ackerman that day at school. He had slipped it into my locker during recess, with his phone number scrawled on the back. It had a teddy bear holding a big heart on the front, and on the inside, a short poem about how he liked my hair. It wasn’t the most impressive literary offering, but I could have died and gone to heaven right then. He had been my crush since forever, and all my friends were burning up with jealousy.
“Yes,” he said. “It was Valentine’s Day.”
“There was a storm,” I continued, my thoughts lost in another time and place. “I had a headache so I took some aspirin and went to bed early. I was just falling asleep when Mom burst into my room. She was crying, and I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me …” I trailed off. I could see it was hard for him to hear it. It was harder for me to say it, but I was going to, because someone had lost his life that night, and I was only beginning to understand the true gravity of it. Nic’s father was dead. And all I had ever fixated on was how my father had been thrown behind bars because of a mistake he made when he was in the grip of fear during a dark, stormy night at the diner. “Mom said you had been closing the diner on your own when a man ran out of the shadows and started yelling things. You thought he was going to try and rob the place, so you took out the gun Jack gave you for Christmas and you shot him.”
“And he died,” he finished.
“Yes,” I echoed. “He died.”
“And it turned out he wasn’t armed.”
God. “Right.”
“And the gun I used didn’t have a permit.”
It gets worse. “Oh.”
“I shouldn’t have been carrying it,” he said, frustration spilling from his voice. “But it was late and I was nervous. Your uncle had warned me about the gangs around Cedar Hill at that time and I thought I needed the extra protection. I thought that man was going to attack me.”
“So you shot him.” My expression was unreadable. Inside, I was ice-cold. “And now you’re doing time for manslaughter while Angelo Falcone’s sons — ”
“Are living in Cedar Hill beside my daughter,” he finished, biting down on his lip before a curse word slipped out.
I was clenching my fists so hard my nails were digging into my palms. “And you didn’t think to share this massive piece of information with me?”
“Jack and I didn’t want you or your mother panicking about it.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “So you thought it would be better if one of Angelo Falcone’s sons filled in the blanks?”
“I thought Jack would make sure you stayed away from them!” he countered, his mounting anger beginning to match mine. If we kept this up, I’d be asked to leave by one of the prison guards.
“You should have told me,” I said, lowering my voice. “I wouldn’t have freaked out. I could have handled it.” Probably. Maybe. Eventually.
“OK, what if you weren’t afraid, then?” he countered. “There was always the chance you might approach them, to try to apologize or make amends for what I did. I know you, Soph. You’ve got a good heart. It’s not foolish to expect something like that from you.”
“That’s crazy, Dad!” Maybe it wasn’t, but I was so riled up I wasn’t going to consider the chance he might be right. “And what about them staying away from me?” I hissed. “They came into the diner right after they moved in! A less cryptic heads-up would have been nice. I thought Jack was just being weird!”
My father shook his head and sighed, his expression defeated. “Maybe we should have gone about it differently,” he conceded.
“Yes,” I said. “You definitely should have.”
He watched me quietly for a moment. His eyes grew big and round until they dominated his weathered face; there was barely any blue left in them now, just stormy gray. “Sophie, now that you know the truth, please stay away from the Falcones, like Jack told you. There’s no knowing how deep their resentment toward me runs, or why they’re back in Cedar Hill again.”
“OK” was all I could muster. I was too spent to argue any more. And besides, it’s not like the Falcones were clamoring to hang out with me anyway.
“They’re a dangerous family in their own right,” he continued, his breath hitching.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I vaguely remembered something from the time it happened — Angelo Falcone wasn’t exactly a stand-up citizen, but I could do with a refresher course on the details, considering I had deliberately avoided reading anything in-depth about my father’s victim.
“It means I don’t like any of this,” he said, and now there was panic pouring from his expression. Panic I could tell he had been trying to hide from me. “I don’t like that they’re near my daughter and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
You’ve already done enough, a part of me wanted to say, but I couldn’t be cruel. “They’re just boys,” I said. “They’re the same age as me.”
“Five minutes!” shouted a stocky prison guard standing three tables over.
My father started wringing his hands. “Will you stay away from them? Please be careful. I’ll speak to Jack about this.”
“They’re just boys,” I repeated.
He closed his eyes and made an attempt to calm himself. “This is what prison does to you.” When he opened them again, his face was still creased with worry.
I nodded, feigning understanding. “Do you think they’re back for something?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I honestly don’t know.”
Out of nowhere, the memory of the black-ribboned honeypot dropped into my mind. I shook it away.
When I got home, I told my mother I was going to bed with a headache. Fighting the urge to ignore everything and force myself to sleep, I pulled out my father’s old laptop and typed “Angelo Falcone, Chicago” into Google. I found an article from the Chicago Sun-Times dating from two Februarys ago, and clicked on it, and suddenly I was drowning in a sea of nausea and incredulity.
A “WHO’S WHO” OF AMERICA’S INFAMOUS FAMILIES ATTEND FUNERAL OF MOB BOSS ANGELO “THE ANGEL-MAKER” FALCONE