I sat back to let her process what I’d said, afraid to push any harder, afraid perhaps I hadn’t pushed hard enough. It took her maybe five minutes to decide to tell me, but I knew she would three minutes in, when she traced my mother’s hair with her finger. It didn’t lessen the wait, but it kept me from speaking.
“I loved your mother,” she said. “We were babies when we met. Younger than you, even. Fourteen, I think. And from the first moment I met her, I knew she would change me. I counted on it. I was just this American stranger, country bumpkin, lost in the city. Your mom knew London like it was her play yard. At fourteen, she’d already managed to charm every street vendor in a ten-block radius.”
I instantly had hundreds of questions but bit them all back to let her tell her story. I couldn’t risk that she’d change her mind and go silent again.
“I followed her everywhere, through school, through university. I even stood by her side when she married him.” Again with the sour face.
“You never liked him?”
Alice shook her head. “I never understood it. He was just some cop. And it wasn’t like she was the cop’s-wife type.”
“And what type is that?”
She refilled our mugs with tea and leaned back in her chair. “Not your mom’s type.”
For some reason, Alice’s answer made me try to picture my dad out in her garden, but I couldn’t see it. He didn’t fit here among the safety and peace of this place. Though it occurred to me just then that if he knew about the farm, perhaps it wasn’t the safe place I imagined it to be. I tried desperately to keep the emotion from my voice as I asked, “Has my father ever been here?”
Alice shook her head. “No. Your mom used to bring you here when things would go sideways at home. And they were always going sideways. Those two fought harder and louder than any couple I’d ever seen. There were times I was sure it would come to blows.”
I must have reacted to that, because her expression was suddenly pained and she seemed to be scrutinizing my face. I tipped my head so that my hair hid the cheek that had gotten the worst of it.
“It never did,” Alice said. “Or, at least, she never told me.”
I shook my head and couldn’t look at her when I said, “He never hit her.”
She drank half her tea and sighed. “Well, when Freddie was born, a lot of things changed. I saw her less. Once Michael came along, she stopped coming to the farm, and since I couldn’t even seem to visit without causing some kind of argument between your mom and him, I stopped coming around.” She stirred the dregs of her tea with the sugar spoon and sat quietly for a long time. “I went back to America for a few years.” More silence. “I don’t know.” The pain on Alice’s face caused a stabbing sensation in my chest that I couldn’t explain. It was like a deep sadness radiated off her in pulses. “I don’t know much that’s happened since then.”
I waited a few long moments for her expression to dull before saying, “That’s not everything.”
She stood up and walked our mugs to the sink, then stared out the window. “Like I said . . .” She drifted off with her words, into her mind, where my answers were still locked away.
“And I said that I can’t help you if I don’t know it all.”
“I promised your mom. I can’t tell until you’re older.”
I checked my tone before asking, “How old must I be?”
“Older than now.”
“And what if something happens to you?”
She turned back to me, still clutching our mugs to her chest. “There’s a letter. It’s supposed to go out to all of us automatically when something happens to one of us.”
“But you are the only one left!”
Alice scowled and dropped the mugs to the counter by the sink with a thud. “You said.”
“Where are your letters?”
She slumped back into her chair, her face scrunched up like she didn’t want to talk about it. But she didn’t seem to understand the importance of my question. “I haven’t been home in a few weeks.”
“Mr. Torres died six months ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You keep saying that, but obviously it’s not. They have all been killed but you and my mother, and you haven’t received any letters.”
Her eyes shifted left to right as she stared at the table, like she was reading words written there, and then she looked up at me. “You know who is doing this. You know who it is.”
I sat very still, trying to decide how to answer that accusation. My thoughts teemed with all the reasons I shouldn’t say—should never, ever tell anyone what I knew. But I had to keep her safe, and she couldn’t be safe if she couldn’t see it coming. She was my last connection—the last person who knew my mother before.
I nodded.
“But you don’t know why. That’s why you’re here? You thought I’d know why?”
I nodded again, waiting for her to put together all the pieces. I should’ve known my mother wouldn’t have surrounded herself with anyone who wasn’t clever enough to keep up.
“It’s him, isn’t it? It’s your—it’s Moriarty.” Again the disgust in her voice, like she was incapable of saying the name without it.