The Don's Runaway Substitute novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Mother's Hands

Allegra's mother lived in a narrow brick house in Evanston, with a lemon tree in a pot on the porch.

Fio drove me there at sunrise and would not come in.

"I'll wait," she said. "I've already lost one night's sleep, I'm allowed to lose a second."

I rang the bell.

The woman who opened the door was small and gray-haired, in a quilted robe, holding a cup.

She looked at my face.

The cup hit the floor and broke.

"Allegra," she whispered.

"No, signora. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. My name is Mara."

She did not hear me.

She took my face in both hands, and her fingers moved across my cheeks, my forehead and my eyebrow.

She found the little mark and began to cry without any noise.

I let her.

I stood there on her porch in a ruined gown and a borrowed coat, and I let a stranger hold my face and weep into it, because I could not think of one thing better to give her.

Inside, she made tea with shaking hands and put out the good cups.

I laid the photograph on the table.

She turned it over and read the back, and her mouth shook.

"She wrote this the Sunday before," she said in a small voice. "She left it in my coat pocket. I found it a month afterward, and I told no one."

"Why not?"

"Because Dario came on the Tuesday." She wiped her face. "He sat in that chair and drank my coffee and told me my daughter had run off to Paris with a man. He said it would shame the family if I made noise. He said the Pozzi name wouldn't survive it. He's sent flowers every month since and a check."

"Did you believe him?"

"I wanted to." She looked at me. "A mother wants to believe her daughter is alive somewhere."

I took her hand.

"The orchard," I said. "She wrote about an orchard."

"The Sandri orchard, past the lake house, where the old cherry trees are." Her eyes closed. "She told me on the phone once that Vincenzo wanted to marry her under those trees. She was never happy about it. She said it was too quiet out there."

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