Chapter 7
The townhouse stood on a quiet street beneath bare trees. Snow covered the front steps and softened the edges of the iron railing.
No lights showed inside.
No car waited nearby.
I parked in the alley behind the property and led them through a narrow garden gate.
The key still worked.
The kitchen smelled of old wood and closed rooms.
I turned on a lamp.
Soft amber light spread across pale cabinets, a round table, and floral curtains my mother had chosen more than three decades earlier.
Patrick stopped in the doorway.
His face changed.
“Her blue bowl,” he said.
A ceramic bowl sat on the counter, faded and chipped at one edge.
I had forgotten it was there.
“She used to put oranges in it,” he continued.
“She said the kitchen needed color in winter.”
He walked toward it slowly.
His left hand touched the rim.
Beatrice stood beside him, silent.
For years, I had kept the townhouse untouched because I could not decide what to do with it.
Now I understood.
Some part of me had been preserving a room where my family had once been gentle.
Before our father’s business.
Before secrets.
Before loss became our inheritance.
Patrick looked around.
“You came here?”
“Twice.”
“Why only twice?”
“Because it still smelled like her.”
He nodded.
He understood.
Beatrice opened the cupboards and began checking supplies.
Most were useless.
Tea that had expired years ago.
Hard sugar.
Empty jars.
“I’ll make something,” she said.
“You just fed us,” Patrick replied.
“I’ll make tea.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is when you are avoiding a conversation.”
She found a kettle and filled it.
I watched them move around each other with practiced ease.
They had built something in my absence.
Not romance, I realized.
Something quieter.
Family without a name.
When the tea was ready, we sat around my mother’s kitchen table.
No one spoke at first.
The old wall clock had stopped at 3:17.
I remembered my mother winding it every Sunday.
Patrick traced a scratch in the table with his thumb.
“What happened a year after Lorenzo helped you?” I asked.
Beatrice looked at him.
He stared into his cup.
“We were living in Racine,” he said. “Beatrice’s mother found a small apartment above a tailor shop. I remembered my first name by then. Parts of my childhood came back. Your face. Mother’s piano. The lake.”
He paused.
“Not the warehouse. Not the men.”
“And Lorenzo found you.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“He came alone?”
“At first.”
Patrick leaned back.
“He said he had spent a year looking. He brought money, documents, and train tickets. He said Father’s people were searching for me and that I had to leave the country.”
“Did you believe him?”
May you like
“I wanted to.”
That answer carried more pain than anger.
