Cassie’s head. The impact was so enormous that a hole is put in the floor. Her head sent to Jenkins’ basement.
“I will deal with you later, Robert.”
“Where are you going?”
“There’s still one more person who was a member of this entire fiasco. She might not consciously remember it. But her subconscious will forever have some of these memories in her head. Even if it is only her parents and not of anything else, I can’t have her one day returning to Maple Street.”
As DiNario makes his way for the door to go to the Francis family home to murder Giovanna, old man Jenkins rushes over to him. He grabs him by the shirt. When DiNario turns around, Jenkins gives him a picture.
It is a black and white photo of a young woman, a baby, and of DiNario himself.
“Dad,” Jenkins says. “Please don’t do this.”
“This is for us, Son. This always was. Maple Street was to be our own little world outside of the real one. These people have complicated things.”
Dominick DiNario leaves the house. The door shuts behind him.
Robert Jenkins is unable to open it. It is as if the door is locked from the outside. He begins to bang on the door. Crying, pleading, and screaming for Dominick DiNario – his father – to not murder innocent Giovanna Francis.
(
A man is eating breakfast at his table. Behind him is a black and white photograph of a young couple and their infant child on the refrigerator.
“People will never learn. I suppose they need to be taught directly instead of being afforded the benefit of the doubt I’ve long given.” The man says.
“Daddy,” Says a little girl. “But what do you mean?”
“It is complicated, dear. You are only seven-years-old. This isn’t something you would be able to understand yet. Forgive me for thinking aloud.”
“Are you ever going to tell me who is with you in that picture on the fridge?”
“One day. Not yet. The only thing you need to know is that your brother failed in understanding much of this. At the same time, he helped me learn.”
“I have a brother?”
“Had a brother, Giovanna. And he’s the reason you are here.”
“Daddy, I don’t understand.”
“I don’t expect you to. I do, however, expect everyone else will. If not by their own evolution and learning of history, but a forceful lesson being taught.”
The man, Dominick DiNario, stands up from his breakfast table.
“Now, dear. If you’ll excuse me for a bit. Our guests will be arriving shortly.”
“What guests?”
“Friends. People like me. People I’ve ignored for far too long.”
“Are they good people like you, Daddy?”
“Hopefully not, Giovanna. Hopefully they’re better. Now hurry. Go upstairs. I am unsure how kind they will be knowing that I have taken in a child.”
Giovanna hugs her father. She then runs up the stairs as only a child would. Free of worry. Merely with thoughts of love for her father and some general curiosity over the people in the photograph.
Dominick DiNario, on the other hand, his worries are far from over. If anything, the burden of fatherhood forced onto him by his only blood-relative has changed him.
Is it for better or worse remains murky, but he knows his time clinging to obscurity on Maple Street proved fruitless.
Having long thought the world was not ready for him or his kind, he now ponders if that world deserves to exist in the first place.
He grabs the old photograph from the refrigerator. Tears begin to trickle down his face.
“I failed you, Robert. The death of those seven years ago is on my hands. It was not murder, though. It was for us. I hope you understand that now. I hope my taking in of Giovanna Francis was enough to prove to you that I’m not nearly as cold as you believed I am for most of your life.”
As Dominick wipes the tears from his face, a knock on the door is heard. His friends have arrived. Endless possibilities await the DiNario family moving forward.
This is what has scared Dominick DiNario his entire life. But instead of running from his powers and humanity, he is going to embrace the former – even if it means the demise of the latter.
Maple Street Page 4