Chapter 15 - The Mother I Buried
For several minutes, I couldn't speak.
The photograph showed a woman with silver threaded through her dark hair, standing outside a small house beneath a row of bare trees.
She looked older.
Thinner.
But she was my mother.
The woman I had watched being lowered into the ground twelve years earlier.
I turned the photograph over.
On the back, someone had written an address in western Pennsylvania.
"No," I whispered.
Roman stood beside me.
"We'll verify it before we act."
"I buried her."
"I know."
"I saw the coffin."
Roman didn't argue.
He understood that facts could be less powerful than the memories a person had built an entire life around.
I stared at the photograph.
"Who was in the coffin?"
Nobody answered.
Dominic's investigation revealed that my mother's death certificate had been issued through a private medical facility. The funeral arrangements had been handled by an attorney connected to Victor Sloane.
There was no independent autopsy.
No hospital record confirming her identity.
The entire event had been arranged by people who had controlled every detail of my life.
I felt as if the ground beneath me had disappeared.
"Why would she leave me believing she was dead?" I asked.
Roman spoke carefully.
"Maybe she thought it was the only way to keep you safe."
"Then why is she standing beside the man who hurt me?"
He had no answer.
I decided to travel to Pennsylvania.
Roman offered to accompany me, but I insisted that I needed to see my mother without an audience.
He accepted my decision, though he arranged discreet protection along the route.
The address led to a small farmhouse outside a town where nobody recognized the Blackmere name.
A woman opened the door.
She stared at me for a long time.
Then her hand rose to her mouth.
"Nora."
My knees nearly gave way.
"Mom?"
She pulled me into her arms.
For one moment, I was seventeen again, standing in a kitchen that smelled of fresh bread and lavender soap.
Then I remembered the basement.
The lies.
The funeral.
I stepped away.
"You let me believe you were dead."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"I thought Victor would stop looking for you."
"He never stopped."
"I know."
"Did you know what he was doing to me?"
She began to cry.
"I knew he was dangerous. I didn't know how far he would go."
"That's not an answer."
"No," she whispered. "It isn't."
We sat in the small kitchen while she told me the truth.
She had discovered Victor's financial crimes while working for the Blackmere family. When she attempted to expose him, he threatened to use me as leverage. Richard helped her disappear, arranging a false death and a new identity.
But Richard died before he could finish protecting us.
Victor eventually discovered that she was alive.
He threatened to kill her unless she helped him find the evidence she had hidden.
She had refused.
Until now.
"Why did you stand beside him in that photograph?" I asked.
My mother lowered her eyes.
"Because he told me you were dead."
I stared at her.
"What?"
"He said you had been killed in an accident. He showed me a photograph of your grave."
I felt the room tilt.
Victor had manipulated both of us.
He had used my fear to keep me running and my mother's grief to keep her silent.
My mother reached for my hand.
"Nora, there is something else you need to know."
I looked at her.
"Victor wasn't the only person who knew you were alive."
She took a folded letter from a drawer.
The handwriting belonged to Richard Blackmere.
May you like
And the letter began with my name.
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