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I lose the ability to move for a beat. I don't understand what I'm looking at, only that it all feels like I’ve missed a step in the dark and stumbled face-first into a wall.

I know the person in the image. I call her mom.

I slide the picture closer. It's her, young, twenties maybe. She's laughing with her whole body, a laugh from the gut, head tipped back, one hand half-raised like she's trying to stop whoever's making her do it and failing. Leggings, a loose sweater falling off one shoulder. Her hair is down and everywhere, and she looks like a girl I've never met. Not the careful woman who folds napkins into perfect triangles and lowers her voice when my father comes into a room. This one looks like she's never been afraid of anything.

There's a dark-haired man with his arm around her, a handsome one who in some ways looks like a slightly younger version of someone I see every day, someone who’s fucked me well and good over a gravestone, though that person got most of his looks from his mother...

I know that face, too.

I shook his hand at my wedding. I let him kiss my cheek. I watched him cross the room later and take my mother's hand in both of his, and I watched her pull it back too fast. I filed it away as unimportant. I’d forgotten all about it before the cake was cut. Before all that, years before, I saved that man’s life.

Kazik Novak isn't looking at the camera. His attention is fixed on my mother like nothing else exists.

My hands aren't quite steady when I turn the photo over.

Elise,

I’ll wait for you. However long it takes. Don’t let your father choose our life for us. What we have is ours. Not his.

K

I read it several times over. The paper's curling at the corners, but the image and the ink have stood the test of time. Whoever wrote this meant every word, and whoever kept it … why did they do that? And why keep it here, with all the stuff about me?

I try to make sense of the handwritten message. Him. Who's him. Her father? His? Was my grandfather, back then, deciding for her in the same way our kind of families often do? Mine decided for me nine months ago in a garden, or maybe, he simply didn’t contest my offer to be a sacrificial lamb.

There was never any indication that my mother had ever personally met a Novak. In fact, she told me she wasn’t acquainted with any of them. That the Novaks only dealt with my father, and only when necessary. It seemed that our families sort of … tolerated each other. Why and how this was so, she left that business to the men. Socially, the two families circled each other and nothing more. Of course she was lying, feeding me the line that talking about rival families was beyond her scope and she would rather stay in her lane.

My heart races and pain stabs at my heart. Why does everyone hold so many secrets, including my own mother? Sure, I can’t say I’ve spoken to her as much as I should have in recent years. Between my demanding career and the fact I wanted to stay away from the family drama, time just slipped by. But there’s always been love between us. There’s always been trust.

She lied to me. Not the way my father lies, with some kind of agenda. She lied because she’d hidden the part of herself that came before the story she wrote with my father. Especially the part that broke her or meant anything at all. She never let any of that in a sentence with me, her dearest daughter. A lie by omission…

Something turns over and flips all the way around deep in my belly. It’s not anger yet. It's closer to grief, and I don't know who it's for—her, me, or the laughing girl in the sweater who had clearly lost that special spark.

I stare at that photograph, I’m not sure for how long. Then, I put everything back the way I found it—everything except the photograph, which goes in my coat pocket; and the USB, hard drive, and Julien’s file, which go into my bag. I turn off the light and leave the room. After hanging the key back on its hook, I leave the house and drive home, with one glaring question I’m going to ask my husband.

CHAPTER 31

Laszlo

Today was an excellent day. Business was bustling. Manon had a short shift, and after the week we'd both had, we deserved a proper dinner so I decided to make something special.

My father taught me how to make pierogi by hand, so I spent the rest of the late afternoon in the kitchen, feeling like it was Christmas morning. The Polish beetroot soup, barszcz, has been cooking on the stove since four. Sour cream in the white dish, dill on top. I set the table, straightened up everything twice, and now I wait for her car.

She finally arrives at ten past eight. I heard her putting the keys in the bowl. Then nothing—she doesn't drop her bag, doesn't come in complaining about the drive home. I leave the dishes and go to see what’s wrong. She's standing in the hall with her coat still on.

"Come sit down, ma macabre," I start. "I've got something special⁠—"

"No," she says, unmoving. "You sit down. We need to talk."

Whatever's on her face gives me pause. I've seen my wife furious. This isn't that at all. I turn off the burner under the soup on my way to the table, because I have a feeling none of us is going to have an appetite afterward.

I take a seat. Manon pulls something out of her coat, lays it on the table, and slides it to me. I sneak a peek from the corner of my eye and my mouth goes dry. Of course I know what this is. I tell myself there is no need to panic. This whole thing can be straightened out.

It's a very old photograph of Manon's mother and my father, taken over four decades ago before either of us existed. As I stare at it, the blood starts pounding in my ears. How did she find this picture? It's supposed to be hidden, out of her reach. Now it's on my dinner table, next to the sour cream.

"Where did you get this?" I ask calmly.

"I went to the Basset house today. You gave me the key." She brushes her hair away from her face then takes a seat across from me, on the edge of the chair, her coat still on. "I heard you and Rafe in the kitchen the other night. You were saying something about the tape my brother’s on, the one Charles had. Talking about leverage. So I went and looked. By the way, I have the stuff relating to Julien. I’ll take care of it myself. You know what they say about if you want to have something done right…"