The Mother Who Chose the Lie
Chapter 07 - The Mother Who Chose the Lie
Elaine made coffee.
It was such an ordinary thing to do that Norah nearly hated her for it.
They sat around a folding table in the storage unit while two armed security men waited outside. Rain tapped on the metal roof. Somewhere beyond the fence, trucks groaned along the interstate.
Elaine placed a paper cup in front of her daughter.
Norah did not touch it.
“You knew where Dad was for seventeen years.”
“Yes.”
“You spoke to him.”
“Yes.”
“You saw him.”
“Sometimes.”
“How many times?”
Elaine looked down.
“Enough.”
Norah laughed without humor.
“Was there a better answer you could have chosen?”
“I don’t know.”
“That seems popular lately.”
Gabriel looked away.
Her mother noticed.
“So he told you.”
“Some.”
“Then he told you what makes him look survivable.”
Gabriel’s gaze sharpened.
Elaine met it.
She had always been a small woman, soft-spoken and practical. Norah remembered her clipping coupons at the kitchen table, washing plastic sandwich bags so they could be reused, apologizing to telemarketers before hanging up.
The woman sitting here was holding a loaded revolver beneath her coat.
Norah wondered how many mothers lived entire second lives their children never saw.
“Start at the beginning,” she said.
Elaine folded her hands.
“Your father was not an innocent man.”
Norah felt Gabriel go still.
“He worked for Vittorio Rossi because the money was good. At first, he told himself he only moved numbers on paper. He knew some of the money was dirty.”
“How dirty?”
“He did not ask.”
“That sounds like a choice.”
“It was.”
Elaine’s answer came quickly.
Norah appreciated it.
“One night,” Elaine continued, “Daniel came home after a dockworker was beaten nearly to death. The payment for the men who did it had gone through an account Daniel created.”
Norah closed her eyes.
“He helped.”
“Yes.”
“Did he know before?”
“He suspected.”
“That is not much better.”
“No.”
Elaine looked older than she had the week before.
“He decided to leave. Elena Rossi found out first.”
Gabriel leaned forward.
“My mother.”
“She had been collecting evidence against Vittorio for months.”
“Why?”
“Because she finally understood what he was turning you into.”
Gabriel’s expression closed.
Elaine continued.
“Elena believed Marco wanted you dead. Vittorio did not agree to the bombing, but he knew Marco hated you.”
“Why?”
“Because Vittorio intended to leave control of the legitimate businesses to you.”
“And the other businesses?”
“To Marco.”
Gabriel’s mouth twisted.
“That sounds like my father.”
“Elena wanted both destroyed.”
Norah looked at her mother.
“So Dad helped her.”
“Yes. They moved three million dollars into accounts that could later be traced to payoffs. They copied ledgers. Recorded calls.”
“And Dad disappeared.”
“He had to.”
“Why didn’t we go with him?”
Elaine’s eyes filled.
“Because someone needed to look abandoned.”
Norah stared.
“What?”
“If I vanished with him, Marco would know Daniel had planned it. If you and I stayed behind, frightened and poor, we looked like casualties.”
“You made me part of his cover.”
“You were fourteen.”
“Exactly.”
“I had no good choice.”
“You had choices. They were simply terrible.”
Elaine nodded slowly.
“That is fair.”
The quiet acceptance made Norah angrier than an argument would have.
She stood.
“Why did you put me in Gabriel’s office?”
Gabriel’s head turned toward Elaine.
Her mother took a long breath.
“Daniel wanted someone near him.”
“Someone?”
“Someone we could trust.”
“You mean me.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No.”
“So every time I carried his files, every time I booked his travel, every time I sat in confidential meetings—”
“I never asked you to steal.”
“You arranged my job without telling me why.”
“I thought Gabriel might eventually need someone who was not afraid of him.”
Gabriel almost smiled.
Norah saw it.
“Do not enjoy this.”
“I’m not.”
“You are a little.”
“Very little.”
She stared until the faint expression disappeared.
Elaine rubbed her forehead.
“I watched you at first.”
Norah’s stomach tightened.
“The photographs.”
“Some were mine. Most were Daniel’s.”
“You followed me?”
“To be sure no one else was.”
Norah thought of the photograph beside the lake.
“You were spying on me to protect me.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds exactly as bad as it is.”
Elaine looked down.
“Daniel believed Marco would eventually move against Gabriel again.”
“And now?”
“Now Daniel believes Gabriel has become too much like Vittorio.”
Gabriel leaned back.
“Based on what?”
“Three men are dead.”
Gabriel’s face hardened.
“Men who tried to kill me.”
“That’s what you told Norah?”
Norah looked between them.
“What does that mean?”
Elaine reached into her bag.
She placed three photographs on the table.
Three men.
Norah recognized one from company security records.
Victor Lyle, former director of logistics. He had disappeared four years earlier after Rossi Holdings discovered embezzlement.
Gabriel had told staff he fled the country.
Norah looked up.
“You said he went to Argentina.”
“I believed he did.”
Elaine tapped the photograph.
“He died in Indiana.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“When?”
“Two days after he vanished.”
“That was not me.”
“Daniel says it was.”
“Daniel is wrong.”
Elaine placed another photograph down.
Another former Rossi employee.
Then a third.
Gabriel stood.
“Where did you get these?”
“From Daniel.”
“I want to speak with him.”
“He doesn’t want to speak with you.”
“He sends photographs, kidnaps his own wife for theater, places his daughter in my office and then refuses conversation?”
Norah turned sharply to her mother.
“You staged the kidnapping?”
Elaine looked ashamed.
“We needed to know whether you would bring the ledger to save me.”
Norah’s chair scraped backward.
“You what?”
“Daniel needed to know where your loyalty was.”
“My loyalty?”
“To whom?”
Norah’s voice rose now.
“To my dead father? My lying mother? My employer who hunted him? Which one of you would like to test me next?”
Nobody answered.
She walked outside.
Cold air hit her face.
Gabriel followed several seconds later.
Norah stood beside the fence with her arms folded.
“I am thirty years old,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I have a mortgage.”
“Yes.”
“I file my taxes.”
“I assume so.”
“I make my own dentist appointments.”
Gabriel looked at her carefully.
“Yes.”
“Then why does everyone in my life seem to think I am twelve?”
He said nothing.
She laughed, then covered her eyes.
“I don’t know what is real anymore.”
Gabriel stood beside her.
Not too close.
After a while, he said, “You are.”
Norah lowered her hands.
“What?”
“You are real. Your work is yours. The life you built is yours. Whatever reason brought you into my office six years ago, you were the one who stayed.”
She looked at him.
He continued.
“You are the reason I stopped throwing coffee cups at walls.”
“You threw one cup.”
“Two.”
“One hit the wall. The other hit the trash can.”
“That was luck.”
She almost laughed.
It hurt.
Then Ezra stepped outside.
“Gabriel.”
Something in his voice changed the air.
He held up a phone.
“We found Daniel.”
Norah’s heart kicked.
“Where?”
Ezra looked directly at her.
“He walked into a federal building in Chicago twenty minutes ago.”
Gabriel frowned.
“Why?”
“He’s asking for protective custody.”
Norah stared at him.
May you like
Ezra’s expression darkened.
“And he says he can prove Gabriel ordered Victor Lyle’s murder.”
