Chapter 4
Norah pressed her face against Mara’s shoulder.
“I left everything,” she whispered.
“Not everything.”
“What did I keep?”
“Yourself.”
Norah almost laughed, but the sound became another sob.
Mara led her to the small guest room at the end of the hallway.
The room held a narrow bed, a wooden dresser, and a window overlooking the flower shop’s faded sign.
“You can sleep,” Mara said.
“I don’t think I can.”
“You don’t have to sleep.”
Mara set a clean towel on the bed.
“You can lie down and let the night end.”
Norah placed her duffel bag on the floor.
The zipper was still wet from the rain.
She opened it and pulled out the gray hoodie she had been wearing when she first met Nico.
The sleeves were stretched.
One cuff had been repaired with blue thread.
She remembered that day with painful clarity.
She had been twenty-six and furious at the world because her mother’s small catering business had collapsed under debts no one had warned her about.
Nico had been standing outside the courthouse in a dark suit, speaking to a man who looked frightened.
Norah had mistaken him for a lawyer.
He had mistaken her for someone who knew where she was going.
Neither of them had known that the conversation would become a life.
She folded the hoodie and placed it beneath the pillow.
Mara watched her from the doorway.
“Do you want me to stay?”
“No.”
Mara raised an eyebrow.
Norah corrected herself.
“Yes.”
Mara came in and sat at the edge of the bed.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Outside, the city began its slow transition from night to morning.
A truck rattled over the street.
A radiator clicked.
Somewhere downstairs, a flower shop refrigerator hummed.
Norah stared at the ceiling.
“Do you think I was foolish?”
“For loving him?”
“For believing him.”
Mara considered that.
“I think you believed the version of him he gave you.”
“And what version was that?”
“The one who needed you.”
Norah turned her head.
“That sounds cruel.”
“It isn’t.”
Mara folded her hands in her lap.
“People can need you and still fail to value you properly.”
Norah swallowed.
“I thought if I stayed long enough, he would eventually understand that I wasn’t impressed by any of it.”
“By the money?”
“By the power.”
Mara’s gaze softened.
“You didn’t stay to prove that.”
“No.”