The Truth Before Love
Chapter 09 - The Truth Before Love
Dominic met Nora in Lydia's office on a Monday morning. There were four chairs, a box of tissues nobody intended to use, and a clock that ticked too loudly. Ruth had offered to come. Nora thanked her and went alone. She wanted to remember that, whatever happened, she could stand in a room with Dominic Moretti and remain herself.
He wore an ordinary charcoal sweater beneath his coat. She wondered whether he'd chosen it to look less formidable, then resented herself for trying to read his intentions through clothes. His face was tired. The trimmed beard she'd once liked to touch was flecked with gray at the chin.
"When did you know?" she asked before he sat down.
"Before I asked you to dinner."
The sentence landed exactly where she had feared it would. Her first clear memory of him was at the station fundraiser, standing near the stained glass. She had thought he'd been interested in the window. Now she wondered whether he'd been watching her.
"Did you come to the fundraiser because of me?"
"Yes."
Lydia remained at her desk, a steady presence at the edge of the room. Dominic did not look at her for rescue. He told Nora that an audit five years earlier had reopened questions about Harbor Point. He had seen Elias Mercer's name on an old complaint and learned that Elias's daughter ran a respected conservation studio. He went to the fundraiser intending to ask whether she knew of any surviving records.
"But you didn't ask," Nora said.
"No. I met you. We talked about the windows. I wanted to see you again. I told myself I'd ask later, when it wouldn't seem like I'd only approached you for the papers. Then later became months."
"And then years."
"Yes."
"Did you fall in love with me, Dominic, or with the idea that I might forgive what your family had done?"
He looked stricken. She was glad she had asked. A gentler woman might have swallowed the question for fear of hurting him. Nora had swallowed enough.
"I fell in love with you," he said. "But I let that love become another reason to keep a lie alive. I knew my signature was on a safety acceptance. I didn't know the plan had been changed after your father refused to approve it. I should have told you what I knew. Instead I hoped it would never matter."
"It mattered to my father every day of the rest of his life."
"I know."
"No," she said, more sharply than she intended. "You know now. There's a difference."
The office was quiet. Outside, somebody laughed in the corridor. Nora remembered the nights she'd talked to Dominic about Elias, trying to explain a good man whose shame had made him difficult to love. Dominic had held her while she cried. He had never said he knew Elias's name from anything other than her stories.
"I don't know what was real," she said.
"The real things were real. Your ridiculous Saturday pancakes. You working through the night on the library windows. The way you make room at a table for the person who arrives late. But I understand if those memories don't feel safe anymore."
She looked at him. This was the man who had remembered her mother's birthday, who knew she hated expensive surprises, who warmed her hands between his when they walked in winter. His tenderness had not been counterfeit. That was what made the betrayal so painful. Love and concealment had lived in the same rooms, and she'd mistaken their coexistence for peace.
"What happens to the studio?" she asked.
"The lockout notice has been withdrawn. The property company has offered a long lease at the original terms, subject to Lydia's review. I'm divesting the disputed holdings under independent supervision. You won't owe me anything."
"I didn't ask you to buy my way out."
"I'm not asking you to take a gift. I'm arranging to undo interference that should never have happened."
Lydia nodded once. "The lease proposal is being reviewed. Nothing will be signed without Nora's approval."
Dominic went on. He had given investigators access to the old Harbor Point files and authorized Anne to correct financial records. Celeste and Helen were providing statements. Vivienne had retained her own counsel. Rafe's board privileges had been suspended pending formal action. It was a list of responsible choices, carefully separated from any appeal for affection.
"And what do you want from me?" Nora asked.
He took a long breath. "Nothing you haven't chosen freely. I hope someday you'll speak to me without needing a lawyer present. But I won't ask you to marry me again. Not now. I haven't earned the right."
For a moment she wanted him to argue. To tell her that love could undo the past, that he would climb some impossible mountain or stand in the rain until she opened a door. He had once been good at grand gestures. Now he was offering something less flattering to both of them: consequences.
"I loved you," she said.
His face tightened. She noticed the past tense and watched him hear it.
"I love you," he answered. "I suppose I will for a long time."
"Then let me go."
He stood, hesitated, and nodded. He did not try to touch her. At the door he looked back once. The gesture was so familiar that she nearly reached toward him. Then he was gone.
Nora remained in the chair until Lydia left her alone. She had expected tears. Instead she felt a profound exhaustion, as though she had been holding a heavy door against a storm and had finally lowered her arms.
That evening Ruth made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Nora ate two halves, then asked for a third. Ruth pretended not to notice her appetite returning.
After supper Nora opened the final pages of Elias's letter. She had been reading it a little at a time, unable to bear the whole truth in one sitting. Near the end he wrote that the payment had come from a company account, not from Dominic personally. He wrote that a woman had come to his workshop asking him to reconsider. And he wrote that a second visitor arrived a week later, carrying a folder in which the original drawings had been replaced.
The visitor had introduced himself as Rafe Moretti's lawyer.
But Elias had added one last name in the margin—a name nobody in the Moretti family had mentioned in any of their statements.
May you like
*Ask Anne Keller what she did with the first audit.*
Nora stared at the words. Anne was the one person Dominic trusted to investigate his company's finances. If Anne had known all along, the truth they were finally pursuing might already have been altered again.
