Chapter 3 - HIS MOTHER’S CHOICE
Roman did not speak for several seconds.
Luca slept against his chest.
That was the only reason Norah believed he remained sitting.
“Elena knew?”
“She knew everything.”
Roman looked toward the front of the cabin as though his mother might somehow be standing there.
For twelve months, Elena Moretti had watched him tear cities apart looking for his wife.
She had watched him stop eating.
Watched him sleep in his office.
Watched him spend half a million dollars chasing leads that disappeared into nothing.
And she had known.
“She told me you chose to leave.”
Roman’s voice was dangerously calm.
“She told me not to humiliate myself by dragging you back.”
Norah’s expression tightened.
“I never asked her to say that.”
“But she did.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I think she was afraid you’d find me.”
Roman laughed under his breath.
Not amusement.
Disbelief.
“My own mother.”
“She thought she was protecting us.”
“From me.”
“From your life.”
The distinction mattered to Norah.
Roman was not sure it mattered to him.
The plane began taxiing again.
Norah checked Rose’s carrier straps.
Roman glanced down at Luca, then back at his ex-wife.
“Tell me everything.”
Norah rested her head briefly against the seat.
“I packed one suitcase.”
“I know.”
“You found it?”
“I found what you left behind.”
Her wedding dress.
Half her clothes.
Jewelry Roman had given her.
Even the diamond necklace his mother had insisted Norah wear at their wedding.
Roman had stared at those things for months trying to understand how someone could abandon nearly everything.
“I took forty-seven dollars in cash,” Norah said.
Roman frowned.
“That’s all?”
“I didn’t want you following cards or bank accounts.”
“You knew me well.”
“That was the problem.”
Luca moved in Roman’s arms.
Roman lowered his voice.
“What happened after the church?”
“Matteo told me to go home and behave normally until midnight.”
“And?”
“At twelve-fifteen, your mother pulled into the alley behind the building.”
Roman pictured it.
Elena behind the wheel of her dark Mercedes.
Norah wearing the red wool coat Roman had bought her their first Christmas together.
One suitcase.
His unborn children.
Leaving.
“She drove me to a bus station in Milwaukee.”
“Why Milwaukee?”
“So there would be no airport records out of Chicago.”
Roman’s jaw flexed.
“Matteo planned this carefully.”
“Yes.”
“Too carefully.”
Norah heard the change in his voice.
“What are you thinking?”
“That he didn’t decide to help you that afternoon.”
Roman looked at the old pocket watch.
“He already had a route. Cash. Transportation. A place to send you.”
Norah’s face slowly changed.
Roman continued.
“He was prepared before you ever walked into that church.”
The plane accelerated onto the runway.
Norah reached for the armrest.
Roman instinctively closed one arm more securely around Luca.
The aircraft surged forward.
A moment later, New York disappeared beneath white cloud.
Rose began fussing against Norah’s chest.
Luca remained strangely calm.
Roman looked down.
His son’s tiny fist had closed around Roman’s shirt.
Something inside Roman cracked.
Not dramatically.
Not cleanly.
Just enough for pain to enter places anger had occupied for years.
“You named him Luca.”
Norah stared straight ahead.
“I liked the name.”
“You knew what it meant to me.”
“I knew.”
“Why?”
Her eyes filled before she could prevent it.
“Because leaving you didn’t mean I stopped loving every part of you.”
Roman’s chest tightened.
Norah turned away quickly.
“Don’t make that into something it isn’t.”
“I’m not.”
“You always do.”
“Do what?”
“Take one piece of softness and treat it like permission.”
Roman looked at her.
That accusation was harder because it was accurate.
He had spent their marriage believing that if Norah loved him, she had accepted everything attached to him.
The guards.
The secrecy.
The danger.
The decisions made for her.
He had never understood that love and acceptance were not the same thing.
“Where did you go after Milwaukee?”
“Wisconsin first. Then Ohio. Then Pennsylvania.”
“With no money?”
“Your mother gave me enough.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand.”
Roman nearly smiled.
“That sounds like her.”
“It lasted longer than you’d think when you stop living like a Moretti.”
He deserved that.
“Eventually I settled outside Queens.”
Roman looked at her worn sweater.
“The apartment?”
“One bedroom.”
“Job?”
“I did bookkeeping from home until the twins came.”
“You were alone when they were born?”
Norah hesitated.
“A woman named Mrs. Alvarez from downstairs sat with me.”
Roman stared at her.
A stranger had sat beside his wife while his children entered the world.
He did not know whether to rage at Elena, Matteo, himself, or all three.
The answer was probably all three.
“Were there complications?”
“Luca needed oxygen for a few hours.”
Roman’s face went rigid.
“He’s fine.”
“You should have called me.”
“I was afraid.”
The simple sentence stopped him.
Not angry.
Not accusing.
Just afraid.
Roman looked down at his sleeping son.
“I would have come.”
“That was what frightened me.”
Silence returned.
Minutes passed.
The cabin lights dimmed.
A flight attendant offered drinks. Neither accepted.
Roman finally asked the question he should have asked earlier.
“Why Denver?”
Norah looked uncomfortable.
“That’s complicated.”
“Tonight seems appropriate for complicated.”
“Three weeks ago, I got a Christmas card.”
Roman’s expression sharpened.
“From who?”
“Your mother.”
“She knew where you were.”
“She had a postal box I checked every few months. We never used phones.”
Roman absorbed another betrayal.
“What did the card say?”
“That if I ever felt watched, I should take the twins to St. Agnes House outside Denver.”
Roman turned his head slowly.
Norah continued.
“She said nobody connected to your business would look there.”
“When did you feel watched?”
“Last Tuesday.”
“What happened?”
“A black SUV stayed behind me from the grocery store to my block.”
“That could be nothing.”
“It was there again Thursday.”
Roman did not argue.
“So you left.”
“This morning.”
“And you intended to go directly to St. Agnes?”
“Yes.”
Roman’s face had gone still.
Norah noticed.
“What?”
“Did Elena tell you who owns St. Agnes?”
“She said it was a retreat house.”
“It is.”
Relief flickered across Norah’s face.
Then Roman finished.
“The Moretti Family Foundation bought it eight years ago.”
The relief vanished.
“Matteo controls the foundation.”
Norah stared at him.
Roman handed Luca carefully back to her.
Then he reached beneath his seat and retrieved her Denver itinerary.
She allowed him to look.
A shuttle reservation was printed beneath the flight details.
ST. AGNES HOUSE.
PICKUP: 11:20 P.M.
Roman read the confirmation code.
He recognized the prefix.
It belonged to a transportation company used by Moretti businesses.
“This reservation wasn’t made through the public shuttle company.”
Norah swallowed.
“I booked through the number in Elena’s card.”
Roman looked out at the darkness beyond the aircraft window.
A terrible shape was beginning to form.
The Denver shooting.
A lieutenant bleeding in a hospital.
Matteo’s foundation.
His mother’s secret correspondence.
Norah and his children being directed toward a Moretti property on the exact night Roman had been forced to Denver.
Coincidences existed.
Roman had survived this long by never trusting them.
Norah whispered, “You think someone knew we’d be on this plane.”
“I think somebody wanted us all in Denver tonight.”
“Who?”
Roman looked at Matteo’s gold watch in her hand.
May you like
Then he looked back at his children.
“Whoever it is,” he said, “they planned this before either of us bought a ticket.”
