“You need another body? I can help, Dad.”

Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, wishing he loved this son more. “Another body won’t make a shred of difference now, Con’. We’re past that point.”

“Fucking Danny.”

“Con’,” Thomas said, “how many times do I have to tell you about my distaste for profanity? Does anything get through your thick skull on that score, son?”

“Sorry, Dad. Sorry.” Connor’s heavy breath moved through the phone lines. “I just…Danny caused this. Danny, Dad. The whole city’s tearing itself—”

“It isn’t all Danny’s fault. He’s one man.”

“Yeah,” Connor said, “but he was supposed to be family.”

That seared something in Thomas. The “supposed to be.” Was this what became of pride in your offspring? Was this the end of the road that began when you held your firstborn, fresh from your wife’s womb, and allowed yourself to dream of his future? Was this the price of loving blindly and too much?

“He is family,” Thomas said. “He’s blood, Con’.”

“To you maybe.”

Oh, Jesus. This was the price. It certainly was. Of love. Of family.

“Where’s your mother?” Thomas said.

“In bed.”

Not surprising—an ostrich always searched out the nearest pile of sand.

“Where’s Joe?”

“Bed, too.”

Thomas dropped his heels off the corner of the desk. “It’s nine o’clock.”

“Yeah, he’s been sick all day.”

“With what?”

“I dunno. A cold?”

Thomas shook his head at that. Joe was like Aiden—nothing knocked him down. He’d sooner poke out his own eyes before he took to his bed on a night like this.

“Go check on him.”

“What?”

“Con’, go check on him.”

“Fine, fine.”

Connor placed the receiver down and Thomas heard his footfalls in the hall and then a creak as he opened Joe’s bedroom door. Silence. Then Connor’s footfalls coming toward the phone, quicker, and Thomas spoke as soon as he heard him lift the receiver.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?”

“Jesus, Dad.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“About an hour ago. Look, he couldn’t have—”

“Find him,” Thomas said, surprised the words came out a cold hiss instead of a hot shout. “You understand me, Con’? Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Find your brother,” Thomas said. “Now.”

Back in June, the first time Joe had slipped out of the house on K Street, he’d fallen in with Teeny Watkins, a boy who’d attended first and second grades at Gate of Heaven with him before he dropped out to support his ma and three sisters. Teeny was a newsie, and Joe, during those three days on the streets, had dreamed of becoming one himself. The newsies ran in tight packs based on whichever newspaper they were affiliated with. Gang fights were common. If Teeny were to be believed, so was breaking-and-entering on behalf of adult gangs like the Gusties, since newsies tended to run small and could squeeze through windows adults couldn’t.

Running with the newsies, Joe saw a brighter world, a louder one. He became acquainted with lower Washington Street’s Newspaper Row and all its saloons and shouting matches. He ran with his newfound gang along the edges of Scollay Square and West Broadway, and imagined the day when he’d cross over those edges and become part of that night world.