Allison laughed. “Now that is quite a mental picture.”
“You still have feelings for him?” Roland asked. His tone was neutral but she could see a flash of nervousness in his eyes.
“I had feelings for us,” she said. “I liked us. I was used to us. He ended it and it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. Turns out there’s pretty nice flooring underneath.”
She saw Roland trying not to smile. He didn’t try very hard.
“I’ll always care about him,” she said, “but I’m not pining for him.”
“That’s good.”
“Very good. I pined after you for years,” she said.
“You did?” he asked.
“I was still a virgin at nineteen,” she reminded him. “I think a big reason for that is a little part of me compared every boy to you. And they all paled in comparison.”
“I’m not that wonderful,” he said. “Really. I’m not.”
“You were to me,” she said. She watched for a moment as he added pills to the shot glass. “Deacon told me earlier today about Rachel. He asked me not to bring her up but I don’t want it to be like that with us. You don’t have to talk about her with me. I want you to know I know so there’s no secrets with us.”
Roland had looked up sharply at her when she said Rachel’s name but he didn’t seem to be angry.
“It must’ve been really painful to lose her in that accident. We don’t need to talk about it. All I’ll say about it is I’m very, very sorry,” she said.
“You lost your mom. Everyone in this house lost somebody,” he said.
“Everybody in this house found somebody, too,” she said.
Roland smiled and said no more about it.
“I’ll take those up to Dad if you want,” she said.
“You won’t talk about Oliver to him?” Roland asked.
“No.”
“Good,” he said. She kissed his cheek and started from the kitchen.
“It was my fault,” Roland said softly, but Allison heard and turned around.
“What was?”
“Rachel dying.”
“I had a cold. When my mother died, I mean. I had a horrible cough and I couldn’t sleep, so Mom went out to the drugstore at midnight. She’d been drinking—not much, just enough to be tipsy and tired. But she lost control of her car. Knowing the area, she probably swerved to avoid a dog or a tumbleweed she thought was a dog. Was her death my fault?”
“Of course not.”
“See?” she said, and kissed his forehead.
Roland took her hand and kissed it. She sensed he had more to say but all he said was, “Tell Dad I’ll be up later.”
“Of course.”
She left him in the kitchen and went up to the third floor, where she found Dr. Capello shuffling around his bedroom in his green-and-blue tartan plaid bathrobe and matching blue slippers. Something about the sound of the slippers on the floor and the loose way the robe hung on his shoulders made him look even older than his years.
“Hey, Dad,” she said from the doorway.
“There’s my girl,” he said, and waved her inside.
“Don’t get excited to see me,” she said, and held up his medicine cup.
He pursed his lips. “Did my eldest put you up to this?”
“I volunteered,” she said. She hadn’t done it to be nice, although she wouldn’t tell Roland that. She wanted a chance to be alone with Dr. Capello again, to see if he said anything about Oliver.
“Talk about dirty pool,” Dr. Capello said. “The monk knows I’ll be nicer to you than him.”
“You have to be nice to me,” she said. “I’m armed and dangerous.”
“I don’t believe it for one second.”
“It’s true. Deacon, for some reason, gave me a can of pepper spray today.” She pulled it out of her pocket and showed it to him.
“Ah,” Dr. Capello said. “I’ll be nice, then.”
She shoved the pepper spray into her pocket again and came into the room.
“Any idea why he keeps spare cans of pepper spray around?” she asked him. “I noticed Thora carries it, too.”
Dr. Capello nodded slowly. “It’s not something I should be talking about.”
“Why not? He’s your son. You’re allowed to talk about your children,” she said.
“What did he tell you?” Dr. Capello asked.
“He said there are a lot of psychos around.”
“He would know.”
“What does that mean?” Allison asked. She sat in the big armchair by the bed. Dr. Capello’s shoulders slumped a little.
“We have a rule in this house, if you’ll remember, and it’s a good rule. We don’t talk about the past. The kids’ pasts, I mean. No more than we have to. It’s for their sake. Kids like them, they needed security, a permanent home. I never wanted them to think they’d ever have to go back to their old lives.”
She remembered Dr. Capello telling her that when he brought her to the house the first time. He said all the kids in the house had been through tough times and she wasn’t supposed to ask them about their old lives or their old families. None of them had asked her how her mother had died. She never asked them how they ended up at The Dragon, either. No reason to. They were all so happy here, none of them wanted to remember the pain in their pasts. None of them wanted to remember they were born anything other than Capello kids.
“I respect that,” Allison said. “But they’re not kids anymore, you know.”
He waved his hand. “Bah. You all were born yesterday.”
Allison sat back in the chair and said nothing, only waited.
Dr. Capello picked up his medicine cup and then put it down again without taking anything.
“His biological father,” Dr. Capello said. “He’s in prison. Two counts of aggravated assault, one count of murder. He’ll die in jail if we’re lucky. Let’s hope we’re lucky.”
“That’s horrible,” Allison said. “Deacon’s biological father killed someone?”
“Classic psychopath,” Dr. Capello said. “I read his file. Liar, manipulator, glib, shallow, remorseless, I could go on and on. But don’t listen to Deacon. There aren’t a lot of them around. True psychopaths make up about two percent of the population. In prison it’s more like...fifty percent. In politics, maybe ninety percent.”
Allison smiled. “Well, thank God Deacon turned out so well despite his father,” she said.
“Not God’s doing,” Dr. Capello said, then pointed at himself. “My doing.”
She smiled. “Well, thank you, then. But that explains why Deacon’s a little...paranoid, I guess?”
“He had a violent childhood before he came to me. It’ll change a child,” Dr. Capello said. “I hope that answers your question?” His tone implied that he’d prefer she dropped the subject.
“Yeah, it does. I wish it was a better answer.”
“We all do, doll.”
Her stomach knotted up at the revelation. Poor Deacon, growing up with a murderer as a father. Yes, that sort of thing would definitely change someone. Because of her mother dying after drinking and driving, Allison had been so cautious around alcohol she’d never once gotten drunk in all her twenty-five years. Not even McQueen could ever talk her into having more than one drink, even when she wasn’t driving anywhere.
“Now,” he said. “I’m going to bed before my eldest gets up here to hassle me some more.”
“I’m not leaving until you take your meds,” she said.
“It’s hard to take them when you’re nauseous.”
“Not taking them will make it worse, though, won’t it?”
“I’m the doctor here, kid. Not you.” Dr. Capello eased himself down onto his bed. He seemed more fragile tonight. His eyes looked puffy and his skin more sallow. “You know what the awful irony is? My grandparents died in this house of lead poisoning. I did everything I could when I took over the place to make it safe and habitable. Yet, here I am, two generations later, poisoning myself to death.”
“Poisoning yourself?” Allison helped Dr. Capello lie back on his pillows. She brought the covers over him to his chest.
“The kidneys clean poison out of your body. When the kidneys can’t do their job anymore, the poisons stay in the system.”
He patted the bed next to him and Allison sat at his side.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.