“He was not fine. He wouldn’t go anywhere near his mother. I tried to talk to him about what happened but it was useless. He didn’t want to hear. At the same time, he didn’t blame me, which I found surprising. He seemed to understand what his mother had been doing with Bob Mortega.”

“You’re saying he blamed his mother for what had happened to her?”

“Yes.”

“At that young an age, that’s unusual.”

“I thought so. I wish now I had forced him to discuss it with me. But a part of me was concerned that he would talk about it at school, then I would end up in prison. I’m not a coward, Ms. Fienman, but I saw no point in leaving my children to the care of the state. Or, to a family who cared nothing for them.”

“How did you feel about Scott? After the revelation?”

“What could I do? He was only a baby. He’d been my son for a year and he wasn’t going to stop being my son overnight. But as he grew older and began to look more and more like Bob Mortega, it wasn’t easy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. After a few months in a coma, Maggie developed an irregular heartbeat. She had trouble breathing. I often had to suck mucus from her lungs. She was prone to respiratory infection. That put an even greater strain on her heart. One night her heart just stopped. By chance I was by her side. I had to inject epinephrine directly into her cardiac muscle to revive her.”

Kelly had to breathe. “You stuck a needle in her heart?”

“Yes. A large needle.”

“But Gene was not in the room?”

“He was in the room. It was one of the few times he was there.”

“A hole in the heart,” she whispered.

“Pardon?”

“How did he react to all this?”

“Fine. He displayed neither relief nor disappointment when she started to breathe again. He was alert the whole time. He helped me prepare the shot. He was a smart kid. He didn’t panic in an emergency.”

“How was he the day after Maggie’s attack?”

“He went off by himself. More quiet than usual.”

“But he must have said something about how he felt?”

“Not a word. It was like he just accepted it.”

“He did not accept it. He internalized it. Changed it into something it was not, until it changed him.”