Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO THE POLICE STATION
“Then don't protect me.”
Nicholas stood in front of his mother.
Teresa's eyes widened.
“What are you saying?”
“If I did something that night, I need to know.”
“You were a child.”
“And you've spent twenty years paying for something I might have done.”
Teresa shook her head.
“Nicky, you don't understand.”
“Then help me.”
He took both her hands.
“I can survive the truth. I can't survive another twenty years of lies.”
I stood beside the library table, still holding the hospital folder.
Daniel watched them with his head lowered.
For a long moment, Teresa said nothing.
Then she whispered, “I was afraid they'd take you away from me forever.”
Nicholas answered gently.
“They did.”
The words seemed to break something inside her.
She sat down and covered her face.
Nicholas knelt beside her chair.
This was a man who had ordered dangerous men out of his office with one glance.
Now he was begging his mother to trust him.
“Whatever happened, we're going to face it together.”
Teresa nodded.
But she still didn't tell him everything.
At nine the following morning, two Chicago police detectives arrived at the estate by appointment.
The lead investigator introduced herself as Detective Lena Ortiz.
She was in her forties, composed, and unimpressed by the mansion.
“Nicholas, we're reviewing the circumstances surrounding your father's death,” she explained. “Your aunt provided material that wasn't part of the original investigative file.”
Nicholas placed the hospital records on the table.
“She also provided a statement bearing my forged signature.”
Ortiz examined it.
“We're aware that its authenticity is disputed.”
“It isn't just disputed. I was medicated and unable to answer questions when it was supposedly signed.”
“We'll examine that.”
She turned toward Teresa.
“Mrs. Romano, would you be willing to come to the station and give us your account?”
Teresa nodded.
“Yes.”
Nicholas stood beside her.
“She's not going alone.”
Ortiz met his eyes.
“She's free to have legal counsel present. Right now, we're requesting a voluntary interview.”
Teresa touched Nicholas's arm.
“I can speak for myself, sweetheart.”
He looked at her.
“I know you can.”
She managed a trembling smile.
“Then let me.”
Watching her walk toward the detectives was painful.
Twenty years earlier, Celia had frightened this woman into silence.
Today, despite everything she feared, Teresa chose to speak.
Nicholas offered his arm as they walked toward the cars.
She accepted it.
I followed with her coat.
Outside, two reporters waited beyond the estate gates.
Someone had told them about the reopened investigation.
A photographer raised his camera.
Nicholas immediately stepped between his mother and the lens.
Teresa gently touched his back.
“Don't hide me.”
He turned.
She straightened her coat.
“I haven't done anything to be ashamed of.”
And she walked past the cameras with her head held high.
At the station, Teresa was questioned for nearly three hours.
Nicholas remained in a waiting room.
He refused coffee.
He refused lunch.
When I brought him a bottle of water, he barely noticed.
“She should have been having breakfast with me,” he said.
I sat beside him.
“She still can.”
He looked toward the interview-room corridor.
“What if I remember something terrible?”
“Then you'll have to decide what kind of man you want to be after remembering it.”
He sighed.
“I've spent years making people afraid of me.”
“Your mother wasn't afraid to come see you.”
“She was afraid of what would happen if she did.”
I didn't answer.
He understood the difference.
At noon, Daniel arrived carrying the old silver watch.
He'd been reviewing the security records with the outside investigators Nicholas had hired to examine the family's finances.
“I remembered something about the strap,” Daniel said.
Nicholas took the watch.
“What?”
“It broke that night. I repaired it because I couldn't bear to throw it away.”
Nicholas examined the dark thread holding the leather together.
“Why keep it at all?”
Daniel looked miserable.
“Because your father had been wearing it when he grabbed you.”
Nicholas froze.
“What?”
“I saw the marks on your wrist at the hospital. I remembered the watch catching against your shirt.”
Nicholas looked at the pale scar above his hand.
Daniel continued.
“When I found the watch, the buckle had snapped. I thought it happened during the fall.”
“And now?”
“Now I'm wondering if it broke when you pulled away from him.”
Nicholas closed his fingers around the watch.
He looked toward the interview rooms.
“My mother said he grabbed me.”
“Yes.”
“What else do you remember?”
Daniel stared at the floor.
“Your aunt shouting for him to let you go.”
Nicholas frowned.
“You never mentioned that.”
“I was afraid to.”
“Of Celia?”
Daniel nodded.
“Of what would happen if I accused her of anything.”
Nicholas stepped away.
“You were supposed to protect me.”
“I know.”
“You signed a lie that took my mother away.”
“I know.”
“And now you're telling me you heard Celia trying to help?”
Daniel's voice broke.
“Two things can be true, Nicholas. She might have tried to protect you that night and still done something unforgivable afterward.”
The sentence stayed with me.
Because it sounded exactly like the problem we were all struggling to understand.
By midafternoon, Teresa was allowed to leave the station.
Detective Ortiz explained that no arrest had been made.
The investigation would continue.
But Celia's statement had raised enough questions that the original evidence needed reexamination.
Outside, Teresa looked exhausted.
Nicholas wrapped his coat around her shoulders.
“You don't have to go back to the mansion,” he said. “I'll take you wherever you feel comfortable.”
She looked at him.
“Could we go home?”
Nicholas hesitated.
“Your apartment?”
Teresa nodded.
“I'd like you to see where I've been living.”
He drove her himself.
I followed in another car with Daniel.
Cicero Gardens was quiet when we arrived.
Nicholas climbed the narrow stairs beside his mother.
Her apartment was small.
There were faded curtains, a worn sofa, and a kitchen table covered with neatly stacked sewing supplies.
On the refrigerator hung a photograph of fourteen-year-old Nicholas.
The same school portrait Nicholas remembered giving Celia.
He stepped closer.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your aunt sent it to me.”
He turned.
“She did?”
Teresa nodded.
“Every few years, she'd send something. A picture. A newspaper clipping. Sometimes money.”
Nicholas stared at her.
“You never told me.”
“She said it was the only way I could know you were safe.”
He looked toward Daniel.
The older man seemed equally surprised.
Teresa opened a small wooden box.
Inside were photographs of Nicholas at eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-seven, and thirty.
A newspaper article about one of his charity donations lay beneath them.
“I watched you grow up through pictures,” she whispered.
Nicholas sat on the sofa.
For several seconds, he couldn't speak.
Then he noticed a small mark on the bottom of an old photograph.
It showed him at fourteen, standing beside the mansion's staircase several days before his father's death.
Behind him hung the grandfather clock.
Nicholas studied it.
Something shifted in his expression.
“The clock wasn't on that side,” he murmured.
Teresa frowned.
“What?”
“The night Dad fell. I remember looking at the clock from the landing.”
He stood.
“I remember his hand around my wrist.”
His breathing quickened.
“And Mom was behind me.”
Teresa went pale.
Nicholas closed his eyes.
“I told him to let go.”
Nobody moved.
“I tried to pull away, but he wouldn't release me.”
His fingers tightened around the broken watch.
Then he opened his eyes.
“I remember putting both hands against his chest.”
Teresa began shaking her head.
“Nicky, stop.”
May you like
But Nicholas was already speaking.
“I pushed him, Mom. I remember pushing my father toward the stairs.”
