Chapter 6 - WHAT ROSA CHOSE
Julian looked at his mother.
Rosa did not move.
For several seconds, the only sound was the grandfather clock in the hallway.
“Mother.”
Rosa gripped the back of a chair.
“I loved Sofia.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I loved her like a daughter.”
“Why did she never reach the prosecutor?”
Rosa’s eyes filled.
“Because I begged her not to go.”
Julian stared.
Emily expected anger.
Instead he looked wounded.
There was something worse about watching a grown man discover his mother had hidden part of his wife’s final day.
Rosa sat.
“Sofia came to me on December twenty-seventh.”
“The day she died.”
“Yes.”
“She told me what she found. Patrick. Red Seven. Dominic. Victor.”
Julian’s voice became raw.
“And you knew?”
“I knew about the payment.”
“Did you know Patrick was framed?”
Rosa hesitated.
“Not at first.”
“When?”
“After the trial.”
Emily felt cold.
“You knew my father was innocent while he was still alive.”
Rosa looked at her.
“Yes.”
The word landed harder than Victor’s confession.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because Dominic told me what would happen if the case reopened.”
Julian laughed bitterly.
“My father threatened you?”
“He didn’t need to.”
Rosa looked at him.
“He showed me photographs of you leaving restaurants. Entering hotels. Standing outside your apartment.”
Surveillance photographs.
Taken by men from the family Dominic had paid.
“Peace was temporary,” Rosa continued. “Dominic said if federal investigators followed the money, the agreement became worthless.”
Emily said, “So my father stayed guilty.”
Rosa nodded.
“And mine stayed alive.”
Emily looked away.
There it was.
The choice.
One mother’s son for another woman’s husband.
Rosa did not ask forgiveness.
Emily respected her slightly for that.
Julian said, “What happened with Sofia?”
Rosa wiped beneath one eye.
“She said Patrick’s name had to be restored. She had found Sam Rowan. Sam told her Patrick left something behind.”
“The original records?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sofia planned to meet federal prosecutors?”
“Yes.”
“And you stopped her.”
“I tried.”
“How?”
Rosa’s gaze went to Victor.
“I called him.”
Julian slowly turned.
Victor said nothing.
Rosa continued.
“I told Victor where Sofia was going.”
Emily’s chest tightened.
“You sent him after her.”
“I sent him to talk to her.”
Victor spoke.
“I met Sofia at Bell & Rowan.”
“The reservation,” Emily said.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She refused to change her mind.”
Julian’s face was unreadable.
“You threatened my wife?”
Victor’s answer came immediately.
“No.”
“Never?”
“Not Sofia.”
That distinction mattered.
Emily hated that it mattered.
Victor rubbed his thumb across his wedding ring.
“She was the only person in that family who could tell me I was a coward and somehow make me feel grateful for the diagnosis.”
A sad smile almost appeared.
“She told me if protecting family required burying innocent people, then we weren’t protecting a family. We were protecting a disease.”
Emily pictured Sofia.
She had never met her.
Yet suddenly she felt the woman’s presence in every object they had touched.
The watch.
The ticket.
The photograph.
“What happened after the restaurant?” Emily asked.
Victor answered.
“She left.”
“For the prosecutor?”
“For you.”
Emily stared.
“Me?”
Victor nodded.
“She had learned your mother had died. She knew you were working at a hotel bakery.”
Emily remembered losing that job.
“She was coming to see me?”
“She wanted to tell you first.”
Julian closed his eyes.
“That’s why Emily’s name was on the ticket.”
“Yes.”
Emily could barely speak.
“What stopped her?”
Victor looked toward the dark windows.
“Snow.”
The crash had not been an assassination.
No cut brake line.
No ambush.
No rival gunman.
Sofia’s car had lost traction on black ice near Fifty-Seventh Street. A delivery van swerved trying to avoid another vehicle and struck her driver’s side.
She died before the ambulance reached the hospital.
Emily felt strangely cheated by the simplicity.
Julian had spent six years living with an accident.
Now he had discovered the destination behind it.
Sometimes that was worse.
“Why did Sofia have my father’s watch?” Emily asked.
“Sam gave it to her,” Victor said. “Patrick left it with him before sentencing.”
Emily turned toward Rosa.
“And you hid her coat.”
Rosa nodded.
“I found the ticket days later.”
“You saw my name.”
“Yes.”
“And you did nothing.”
Rosa began crying silently.
“I was afraid.”
Emily stared.
“So was my mother.”
“I know.”
“No. Everyone keeps saying that tonight.”
Her voice shook.
“You don’t know.”
Nobody interrupted.
“My mother stopped buying groceries at the same store twice because she thought someone followed her. She stopped answering the door. My father died believing I was ashamed of him because I was too angry to visit during his last month.”
Emily pressed a hand against her mouth.
She had never told anyone that.
Not even Sam.
Patrick had called eleven times before his stroke.
Emily had ignored six.
She had been nineteen when everything happened.
Twenty-two when he died.
Old enough to be furious.
Too young to understand how permanent silence could become.
A tiny voice came from the staircase.
“Emily?”
Lily stood halfway down.
Rosa immediately wiped her face.
Julian moved toward his daughter.
“Why are you awake?”
“You’re loud.”
Lily looked at Emily.
“Are you crying?”
Emily wiped her cheeks.
“A little.”
Lily came down.
She held something in her hand.
A folded sheet of paper covered in crayon.
“I found this in Mommy’s box.”
Julian froze.
“What box?”
“The one Grandma keeps in her closet.”
Rosa stared at the paper.
“I forgot that was there.”
Lily opened it.
The front showed a child’s drawing.
Three stick people beneath a Christmas tree.
MOMMY.
PAPA.
LILY.
Sofia had probably written the labels while helping a three-year-old.
On the back was different handwriting.
Adult handwriting.
Sofia’s.
Three lines.
If something happens before I reach her:
Emily Hart works at the Hudson Crown pastry kitchen.
Tell her Patrick was innocent.
Sam knows where he put the first book.
Emily read it twice.
Then a third time.
Julian looked at her.
“The first book.”
Emily suddenly stopped breathing.
Because she had heard those words before.
Not from Sam.
From her father.
The last time Emily visited Patrick in prison, he had pressed his hands against the visiting-room glass and said something she had dismissed as another desperate attempt to convince her.
If you ever stop being angry, ask Sam about the first book.
For eighteen years, Emily had thought Patrick meant a book he wanted her to read.
Now she knew he hadn’t.
May you like
Emily looked at Julian.
“I know what Sofia was looking for.”
