The North Wing
Chapter 04 - The North Wing
The north wing had belonged to my mother long before illness reduced her world to a bedroom, a sitting room, and a balcony overlooking the winter garden.
When I was a boy, she had hosted music there on Sundays. Violinists, singers, old women with pearls and younger women with secrets. My father had conducted his business downstairs, where men carried guns beneath tailored jackets and swore loyalty over espresso.
My mother conducted hers with tea.
She remembered everything. Birthdays. Debts. Which wife had cried in the powder room. Which son had lied about cards. Which priest accepted donations and which one delivered messages.
Then the strokes came.
The first bent her left hand.
The second slowed her speech.
The third—if it had been a stroke at all—made everyone around me treat her as if she had become a room people entered only when necessary.
That was what I hated myself for as I walked toward the north wing.
I had allowed the room to become smaller.
Marco fell into step beside me.
“Mrs. Walker and the child are in the breakfast room,” he said. “Two men outside. One inside.”
“Good.”
“Vivien?”
“In the blue bedroom.”
“Alone?”
“For now.”
Marco knew better than to ask the question forming behind his eyes.
We reached the carved walnut doors. My mother’s private nurse, Annette, stood outside with a tray in her hands. She was in her fifties, all white shoes and practical silence. She had worked for our family for eight years, and she looked now as if she had aged ten of them in the last twenty minutes.
“Who is with her?” I asked.
Annette glanced toward Marco.
“He said he was sent by Miss Ashcroft.”
“What’s his name?”
“He gave a card.”
She handed it to me.
No title. No hospital. No clinic.
Dr. Miles Halpern.
Vivien’s doctor of choice.
I opened the door.
The room smelled of lavender, lemon polish, and something medicinal beneath both. My mother sat near the window, wrapped in a blue shawl. Her hair, once black as mine, was silver now, carefully pinned. Dr. Halpern stood beside her with a leather case open on the table.
He turned when I entered.
“Mr. Duca,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting—”
“I know.”
My mother’s eyes moved toward me.
Clear.
Tired, yes.
But clear.
“Lorenzo,” she said slowly.
One word. Dragged from a body that had betrayed her, but still hers.
I went to her and kissed her forehead.
Her good hand gripped my wrist with surprising strength.
That grip told me to listen.
Not speak.
Halpern closed his case. “Your mother is fatigued today. It would be better if—”
“Sit down,” I said.
He blinked.
I looked at Marco. “The doctor is tired. Bring him a chair.”
Marco moved so quickly and politely that Halpern had no opportunity to refuse. A chair appeared behind him. Halpern sat because the alternative required a kind of courage he did not have.
I took the pharmacy receipt from my jacket and placed it on the table.
“Explain this.”
His eyes fell to it.
A practiced man would have reached for his glasses.
A guilty one reached for his watch.
Halpern touched his cuff and said, “I’d need context.”
“You’ll have plenty.”
My mother’s grip tightened.
Her lips moved.
I leaned close.
“No... tea,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes.
It is a terrible thing to realize a child has been braver than you.
“Who brings the tea?” I asked.
Annette answered from the doorway. “Miss Ashcroft sometimes insists on bringing it herself. She said your mother preferred the personal touch.”
Halpern’s face had gone damp.
I looked at him. “Did you prescribe the additional medication?”
“There are adjustments—”
“Did you prescribe it?”
Silence.
My mother lifted one trembling finger and pointed not at Halpern, not at the receipt, but at the small writing desk by the bed.
Marco opened the drawer.
Inside were envelopes.
Dozens of them.
Some addressed to me in my mother’s careful hand. Some opened. Some still sealed. All hidden beneath a stack of prayer cards.
Marco brought them over.
I recognized my name again and again.
Lorenzo.
My son.
My dearest boy.
I opened the first envelope.
The date was six weeks earlier.
Do not marry Vivien until you speak to me alone.
I opened another.
Elena Walker is afraid. Watch the child. Children know what servants cannot say.
Another.
Vivien asks too many questions about the old trust. She wants the key to the Duca Foundation safe.
I looked at my mother.
Her eyes shone, furious and wet.
All this time, she had been reaching for me through paper.
Someone had been taking her hand away.
Halpern stood abruptly. “This has gone beyond my—”
Marco placed one hand on his shoulder and sat him back down.
I did not look away from my mother.
“Who opened them?” I asked.
She swallowed. The effort looked painful.
“Vivien,” she said.
A sound came from the doorway.
Not Annette.
Not one of my men.
Vivien stood there, pale green gown still perfect, her expression less so.
May you like
Behind her, in one hand, she held Mia’s stuffed bunny.
And its head had been torn halfway from the body.
