What Leah's Mother Really Did
Chapter 07 - What Leah's Mother Really Did
The bank records forced Leah to confront a possibility she had refused to consider.
Her mother had not simply died when Leah was thirteen.
Someone had lied about the timeline.
Dante arrived at Elena's apartment that evening.
Leah almost closed the door.
He caught it gently.
“I won't stay if you don't want me to.”
She studied him.
“Then why are you here?”
“To tell you the truth.”
She stepped aside.
Dante placed a folder on the table.
Inside were hospital records, old photographs, and a police report.
Leah's mother had been involved in an investigation into Raviieri charity accounts. She had disappeared for four years before returning to New York under another name.
The woman Leah remembered as her mother had not been living the life Leah thought she had.
She had been hiding.
From Marco.
From corrupt members of the Raviieri organization.
And, eventually, from the people who had helped her disappear.
Leah's voice shook.
“Why didn't Bianca tell me?”
“Because your mother begged her not to.”
“And you?”
“I didn't know everything.”
“Did you know she was alive?”
Dante's silence was answer enough.
Leah stepped back.
“When?”
“Three months before she died.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“You saw her?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“She came to me.”
“What did she say?”
Dante swallowed.
“She asked me to protect you from the truth.”
Leah laughed once, bitterly.
“Everyone keeps protecting me from the truth.”
He looked at her.
“I thought you deserved a childhood.”
“I was twenty-one when you knew.”
“I know.”
“And you still kept it from me.”
“Yes.”
She turned away.
Dante spoke again.
“She told me she was dying.”
Leah stopped.
“She had cancer.”
The anger in Leah's chest collapsed into something colder.
“Why did she hide it?”
“Because Marco had found her.”
Dante opened another document.
There was a photograph.
Leah's mother stood outside a small farmhouse in Vermont.
Beside her was a little girl.
The same girl from the old photograph.
Leah stared.
“That isn't me.”
“No.”
“Then who is she?”
Dante looked at her.
“Your sister.”
Leah could not breathe.
May you like
Her mother had another daughter.
And according to the date on the photograph, that girl had been alive for years after Leah believed her mother had died.
