Chapter 4: What She Buried in Ohio
The dark blue car pulled away before Joseph's men could reach it.
I sat frozen in the back seat, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to silence.
The driver was already on his radio.
Short, clipped words I couldn't follow.
By the time I walked through my mother's front door, my legs felt like they belonged to someone else.
She was in the kitchen.
Standing at the counter with both hands wrapped around a mug she wasn't drinking from.
She looked up when I came in, and for one second her face was pure relief.
Then she saw my expression.
The mug went down.
"What happened?"
"Someone called me.
On the way here." I sat down at the kitchen table.
"He said to tell you that your twenty years of hiding just ended."
The color left her face so completely that I stood back up.
"Mom."
She didn't move.
"Mom, sit down."
She sat.
Slowly.
Like someone who had been waiting for this moment for so long that now that it had arrived, her body didn't know what to do with the weight of it finally landing.
I sat across from her.
"Tell me."
"Audrey—"
"Tell me.
All of it.
Tonight."
She looked at her hands for a long time.
"I met Joseph when I was nineteen," she said.
"I knew what he was.
I told myself it didn't matter.
I was young and I was stupid and I loved him in the way you love someone when you don't yet understand what love costs."
"What happened?"
"I got pregnant." She looked up.
"I told him.
He was — he wasn't angry.
He was careful.
He said he needed time to think about what it meant.
What kind of life a child would have in his world." She paused.
"And then Marco Carbone came to see me."
I went still.
"He came to my apartment.
Alone.
He was very polite.
He sat down and he had coffee and he explained to me, very calmly, that Joseph was in the middle of a negotiation.
A significant one.
That Joseph's value to certain people depended on him remaining — uncomplicated." She pressed her lips together.
"He said a pregnant girlfriend was a complication.
He said that if I truly loved Joseph, I would understand that."
"He threatened you."
"He offered me money." Her jaw tightened.
"A great deal of it.
And then he explained what would happen if I declined."
"What did he say?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"He said accidents happen to people who make powerful men's lives difficult.
He said he would be very sorry if something happened to someone so young." She looked at me directly.
"He meant you, Audrey.
Before you were even born."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"So you ran."
"I told Joseph I lost the baby.
I thought — I thought if he believed that, he wouldn't look for me.
And if Carbone believed it, he would leave us alone." She exhaled slowly.
"I moved to Ohio.
I had you.
I built something small and safe and I never looked back."
"You never told me."
"I was protecting you."
"I had a right to know."
"You were a child."
"I'm not a child now."
She looked at me.
Her eyes were wet but she wasn't crying.
She had the expression of someone who has been holding something so long that setting it down feels more frightening than continuing to carry it.
"How did they find us?" she asked.
"Me." I felt the word like a stone in my chest.
"I found Joseph first.
By accident.
I'm working at the Golden Crown.
His cuff pulled back and I saw the tattoo and I said—" I stopped.
"I said my mother had the same one."
She closed her eyes.
"He has the photograph," I said.
"The Polaroid.
He's carried it this whole time."
She didn't speak.
"He thought you lost the baby.
He thought you left because you were frightened of his world." I watched her face.
"He didn't know about Carbone."
Her eyes opened.
"He doesn't know?"
"No."
Something moved across her face.
Not relief.
Something older and more complicated than relief.
"He needs to know," I said.
"Audrey—"
"Carbone called me tonight, Mom.
On my phone.
A number I've never given anyone.
He already knows who I am and where we live." I leaned forward.
"Joseph is the only person in this city who has any reason to stand between us and that man.
But he can't do that if he doesn't understand what Carbone did."
She was quiet for a long time.
A knock at the front door.
We both looked toward the hallway.
"That will be him," I said.
My mother's hand came up and touched the hair behind her right ear.
The small, automatic gesture of someone checking that something is hidden.
She caught herself doing it.
May you like
She lowered her hand.
"Let him in," she said.
