💍 THE MAFIA BOSS PROPOSED WITH A DEAD WOMAN'S NAME

Chapter 10 - The Mother Who Came Back

The greenhouse smelled of wet earth and lemon leaves. Norah arrived twenty minutes early and spent them examining the chipped labels in the plant pots, trying to occupy her eyes with something that couldn't break her heart.

At eleven a woman came through the side door in a plain brown coat. Her hair was shorter than in the photographs, with gray beginning at the temples. She was neither beautiful nor ghostlike. She looked tired. She stopped when she saw Norah, as though twenty-eight years had finally acquired a weight she could feel.

“Hello, Nori.”

“That's what they called me when I was little.”

“I know.”

“I don't use it now.”

Clare nodded. “Then I won't.”

They sat on a bench beside trays of young basil plants. Neither reached for the other. Norah saw a narrow scar beside her mother's mouth and wanted, absurdly, to ask whether it hurt when she laughed.

“I want answers,” she said. “Not reasons I should feel sorry for you.”

“I'll try to keep them separate.”

Clare told her the outlines. She had been seventeen and terrified when Norah was born. Ida wanted the child to have security. Clare wanted the freedom to finish school and make enough money to come back. When she met Julian Hayes, she believed she could build a different life, but his family had conditions. At first she visited in secret. Later she stopped, ashamed of how much time had passed. The lie had become easier for others and more shameful for her.

“And Theo?” Norah asked.

“Julian wanted children. I thought I could be a good mother the second time. That was unfair to you.”

“Did you ever intend to tell him about me?”

“Yes. I told him before he died. He was angry with me for letting Ida decide, but he wasn't blameless either. He liked a family that didn't ask difficult questions.”

Clare's fingers turned the strap of her handbag. “When Julian died, I took over the trust. I found invoices billed for repairs that never happened and properties valued low so they could be sold cheaply. Marcus said he'd destroy me in court if I questioned them. Simone said Theo would be safer if I let Valente run things.”

“Then the car went into the river.”

“I went to a warehouse because Marcus promised records. Someone followed. I ran. A truck forced me against a barrier and the car went into the water. I got out before it sank. I don't know who was driving the truck. I've never claimed I did.”

“Why didn't you come home?”

“Because I received a photograph of Theo asleep, taken through his bedroom window. And a message telling me what would happen if I came back.”

Norah remembered the photograph outside the school. “You could have told the police.”

“I did. I worked with investigators, changed where I was staying, gave them documents. I was told we would make an arrest soon. Then months passed.”

“You could have called me.”

Clare's eyes filled. “I had no good excuse for not calling you. By then I'd hidden from you so long I was afraid you'd hang up.”

“I might have.”

“Yes.”

For a while they listened to the water dripping from a hose. On another bench an elderly man taught a child how to press a seed into soil without crushing it. The ordinary sight made Norah sadder than the confession.

“Are you going back to Theo?”

“Not until the people caring for him know it's safe. And not by arriving at his door as though I hadn't missed a year and a half. He deserves help making sense of it.”

“He thinks you're dead.”

“I know.”

“That's what you did to him.”

Clare lowered her head. “I know that too.”

A gust of air moved the lemon leaves above them. Clare reached to steady a pot that had tipped slightly on its shelf. The motion was so familiar—Ida did the same thing whenever a cup stood too close to the edge—that Norah felt a sudden, childish desire to lean against her. She kept her hands in her lap. Wanting comfort wasn't the same as being ready to receive it.

Norah had imagined shouting. Instead she found herself asking a question she had carried since the first afternoon in the Hayes kitchen.

“Did you love me?”

Clare looked at her directly. “I did. I do. But love that never reaches the person it's meant for can become an excuse for all sorts of cowardice. I don't expect you to count it as enough.”

Norah began to cry then, silently and against her wishes. Clare did not move closer. After a minute she offered a packet of tissues across the empty space between them.

Clare reached into her handbag and brought out a photograph of a younger Norah in a yellow graduation gown. "Ida sent me this. I kept it beside my bed."

"So you watched me become a person from a distance."

"Yes. It was easier than risking your anger. I know how terrible that sounds."

Norah looked at the girl in the picture. She remembered standing outside the school that day, searching the crowd for Ida, wondering why everyone else seemed to have more people to cheer for them. If Clare had come, Norah might have rejected her. She might have listened. She'd never been allowed to find out.

"You don't get to show me the scraps you collected and call that motherhood," she said.

"I won't."

A gardener passed carrying a flat of seedlings. Clare waited until he had gone, then asked whether Norah had been happy growing up. The question was clumsy, but sincere. Norah told her about Frank teaching her to ride a bicycle and Ida staying beside her when she had pneumonia. She also told her about loneliness she had never been able to explain. Clare listened without asking that the good memories cancel the bad ones.

When they parted, Norah agreed to another meeting. She did not promise a relationship. Clare accepted that. She gave Denise, through Norah, the names of two bank employees who had handled the suspicious transfers.

At the greenhouse gate Norah turned back. “Why did Valente choose me at the restaurant? He told me it was because I helped Theo.”

Clare hesitated. “He wasn't the one who found you. I was. I asked someone to put your name in front of him, because I thought he'd protect you.”

“Who?”

“Eleanor Hayes.”