“She was going to take him, Doc. Carrie was going to raise him to be the next monster. A hybrid of her and Gault. Holy shit. How lucky for her that Natalie died and Carrie could then kick her plan into gear,” Marino goes on.

He has it all figured out.

“She creates an incident in Maryland, and you, Lucy and Benton haul ass there,” he’s saying as a gust of wind sweeps a sheet of rain across the yard. “Or she assumed you’d hightail it out of town, leaving only Dorothy, Janet and Desi all by their lonesome. Only you threw a monkey wrench into things by staying here, and then the attack had to be changed to your house …”

“I have no idea what was planned or why,” I reply. “Only that it’s over and all of us are safe.”

“Except for Desi. What are we going to tell Lucy and Janet?”

“We’ll tell them the truth. Desi can’t help who his biological parents are. It’s no different than if he’d been adopted and we had no idea who or where he came from. There’s no guarantee what anyone gets, Marino. Not even when it’s your own biological child.”

“But what if he’s like them? I mean really. Think about it. He’s right here with us. What if he grows up to be like them? I mean as great as the kid is? What if …?”

“He won’t be raised by them,” I reply. “He’ll be raised by us. Now let’s go inside. Let’s get brunch going, and I was thinking of making a pitcher of my bloody marys.”

We walk back into the house, taking off our raincoats, and water drips on the mat and the hardwood floor. I kick off my drenched bedroom slippers, and step into a bathroom.

“I think I have what I need in the house to make peanut butter pie.” I toss him a towel.

“Since when do you make that?” Marino looks as if he’s seen a ghost, and in a way he has.

“It seems like a good day for it with Dorothy here, and she loves peanut butter and chocolate, has quite the sweet tooth.” I reset the alarm. “But then you probably know that about her,” as we return to the kitchen, where Desi is on a footstool getting plates out of a cabinet.

I look at his thin broad-shouldered frame in the Celtics warm-up suit Marino gave him. Desi isn’t going to be very big or tall but already he’s graceful and lithe, and he’s getting strong. He fixes his wide blue eyes on me as he steps down from the stool with an armload of plates, and I’ve not really talked to him since it all happened. I take the plates from him.

“I think you know where the napkins are,” I say to him.