Chapter 14
“I know.”
“I washed blood from your shirts because you were too tired to notice it was there.”
His face tightened.
“I know.”
“You knew everything I gave you, and you still believed I was here because of a card.”
“I never believed that.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because I wanted to believe that if you left, you would be choosing a different life instead of rejecting me.”
Norah felt the anger inside her falter.
She did not want his explanation to make sense.
She did not want his fear to resemble her own.
She had spent the night building a wall out of one sentence.
Now he was standing on the other side of it, admitting he had spoken from the same weakness that had driven her away.
But understanding was not forgiveness.
Not yet.
“Your fear doesn’t erase what you did,” she said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop saying it like a shield.”
Nico looked down.
The silence that followed was not empty.
It carried every night he had come home late.
Every time she had waited by the window.
Every question she had swallowed because she knew he was carrying more than he could explain.
Mara stepped toward the desk.
“Norah, we should take the ledger and leave.”
Nico did not object.
That surprised Norah.
He moved aside from the doorway.
“You can go.”
Mara’s suspicion did not lessen.
“Why aren’t you stopping us?”
“Because I promised her mother I wouldn’t.”
“You have broken promises before,” Norah said.
Nico accepted that without looking at her.
“Yes.”
The word was quiet.
Norah placed the ledger inside the canvas bag she had brought from Mara’s apartment.
The photograph went in beside it.
As she lifted the envelope containing her mother’s letter, a folded sheet slipped out and drifted to the floor.
Nico bent to pick it up.
Norah reached for it at the same time.
Their hands touched.
The contact was brief.
Still, memory moved through her with painful precision.
His hand at the back of her neck.
His fingers intertwined with hers beneath restaurant tables.
The way he used to press his thumb against her knuckles whenever he wanted to reassure her without speaking.
She pulled away first.
Nico handed her the paper.
Neither of them mentioned the tremor in her fingers.
Norah unfolded the sheet.
It was a photocopy of a birth certificate.