I Vanished with the Don's True Heir novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: Is It Mine

I thanked her.

I don't know why. My mother raised me to thank people.

Then I put the phone down in its cradle very gently.

"He'll see it," I said.

"Who sees the claims?"

"An office on Passyunk. A woman who's worked for the family since before I was born. Every claim on that plan goes across her desk."

"And she tells him."

"She tells Achille."

Orsola sat down on the stool behind the desk.

For a while the only sound was the heater.

Machias, Maine. A county clinic. An ultrasound, a girl.

The Quoddy Tide Motel, Route 189, Lubec. I'd said it out loud and a nice woman in a snowman cardigan had typed it in.

"I'll go," I said. "Tonight. You've got a truck. Drive me to Calais and I'll find a bus."

"To where?"

"I don't know. West. Ohio."

"Ohio," Orsola said. "God help you."

I went to Room 4 and pulled the plastic bag out from under the bed and started putting things in it.

Toothbrush. Sweatpants. The scan.

Orsola came and stood in the doorway.

"I did this," she said.

I stopped.

"Packed a bag in the middle of the night. Told myself I'd send for him once I was safe. Told myself a lot of things." She leaned on the frame. "Twenty-eight years I've been safe. He's on the TV holding that girl's arm, and I sent him cards."

"That's not the same."

"No," she said. "You've got a better reason to run than I did. You've got her in there."

"So let me go."

"And then what? Every time a car pulls into some lot in Ohio, you get in the refrigerator?"

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