Chapter 3
Then she gave Norah an address.
It was an old apartment above a flower shop in Queens, far from the polished streets where Nico’s people worked and waited.
“You can take the first train,” Mara said.
“I’ll be there before sunrise.”
“Norah?”
“Yes?”
“Do not call him.”
Norah looked toward the black screen of the old phone.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
Norah did not answer.
Mara sighed.
“He may say things when he realizes you’re gone.”
“He already said the thing that mattered.”
“People who are careless with love often become eloquent when they’re afraid of losing it.”
Norah’s throat tightened.
“I don’t want eloquence.”
“What do you want?”
Norah looked at the duffel bag beside her.
“I want to know who I am when nobody is choosing for me.”
Mara was quiet for a moment.
“Then start there.”
At 2:18 a.m., Norah paid for the coffee and left the café.
She walked to the subway entrance with her hood drawn over her face.
The station smelled of wet concrete and metal, and the fluorescent lights made everyone look tired.
She sat on a bench beneath a route map and waited for the first train toward Queens.
A man in a gray coat stood across the platform.
He was not looking at her.
At least, that was what she told herself.
He held a newspaper in front of his face, but the pages never turned.
Norah’s pulse quickened.
She shifted her bag closer to her leg.
The man lowered the newspaper.
For one terrible second, she thought she recognized him as one of Nico’s drivers.
Then the train thundered into the station, blocking her view.
When it pulled away, the man was gone.
Norah remained on the platform until the next train arrived.
She did not know whether the stranger had been watching her or whether grief had turned every shadow into a warning.
By 4:06 a.m., she stood outside Mara’s building.
The flower shop below was dark, its windows filled with sleeping roses and bundles of eucalyptus.
Mara opened the apartment door before Norah knocked.
She wore an oversized sweater, mismatched socks, and the same worried expression she had worn when Norah’s mother died.
Norah stepped inside.
Mara closed the door and embraced her without asking permission.
The hug was not careful.
It was not polite.
It was the kind that held a person together when she had forgotten how to do it herself.