“But since you’re Dante’s best friend,” he goes on, “it’s not what Dante wants but what he needs. Right? That’s why even if Dante was screaming at you to kill this punk, you wouldn’t do it. Because it wouldn’t help him in the long run. It would hurt him.”

“Exactly,” says Michael, his gun hand shaking now even though he’s trying to cover it. “But this shit ain’t over, white boy. Not by a long shot. This shit ain’t over!”

Somehow Dunleavy makes it look like it was Michael deciding on his own to put down the gun. He gives Michael a way out so it doesn’t look like he’s backing down in front of everyone.

Still, the whole thing is messed up, and when I get to my grandmom Marie’s place, I’m so stressed I go right to the couch and fall asleep for three hours.

Nothing would ever be the same after that catnap of mine.

Chapter 9. Kate Costello

“OH, MARY CATHERINE? Mary Catherine? Has anyone here seen the divine MC?” I call in my sweetest maternal-sounding voice.

When there’s no answer, I jump up from my little plasticized lounge chair and search my sister’s Montauk backyard with the exaggerated gestures and body language of a soap-opera actress.

“Is it truly possible that no one here has seen this beautiful little girl about yea big, with amazing red hair?” I try again. “That is so peculiar, because I could swear I saw that same little girl not more than twenty seconds ago. Big green eyes? Amazing red hair?”

That’s about all the theatrics my twenty-month-old niece can listen to in silence. She abandons her hiding spot on the deck, behind where my sister, Theresa, and her husband, Hank, are sipping margaritas with their neighbors.