Chapter 2
“A woman came here last week asking almost exactly the same questions.”
My hand stopped.
“What woman?”
“About your mother's age, maybe a little older.
Well-dressed.”
My pulse quickened.
“Dark hair?”
“Yes.”
“Was she with a man?”
“She came alone.”
I pulled out my phone and showed him a still image Julian had sent me from the security footage.
The bookseller leaned closer.
His face changed.
“Yes.”
It was her.
The woman from the restaurant.
“Did she tell you her name?”
He nodded slowly.
“Evelyn.”
That evening, I sat across from Chloe eating pasta while the binder rested on the empty third chair.
For years, that chair had belonged to Mom.
Eventually, we had stopped thinking about it that way.
Now it felt occupied by questions.
“So Evelyn ate at your restaurant?”
Chloe asked.
“I think so.”
“And didn't pay?”
“Apparently.”
“That seems rude.”
“Very.”
“Maybe she forgot.”
“You don't accidentally sneak through a staff door.”
Chloe twirled pasta around her fork.
“Maybe she wanted you to find the binder but didn't know how to talk to you.”
“Then she could have called.”
“Maybe she was scared.”
I looked at my sister.
“Of what?”
Chloe shrugged.
“You.”
“Me?”
“You do the eyebrow thing.”
“What eyebrow thing?”
She raised one eyebrow dramatically.
I laughed despite myself.
Then she became more serious.
“Maybe Mom did something she didn't want us to know.”
It was the thought I'd been avoiding.
“What kind of thing?”
“I don't know.”
She pushed her plate away.
“But Mom wasn't perfect.”
I stared at her.
Chloe rarely talked about our mother that way.
“She forgot things,” Chloe continued.
“She got mad sometimes.
She once blamed me for breaking the lamp and then found out she'd knocked it over herself.”
“I remember.”
“And she apologized.”
I nodded.
“So whatever happened,” Chloe said, “maybe it's just something normal people messed up.”
Normal people messed up.
It sounded simple.
Maybe it was.
After dinner, we examined the binder together.
Near the back, Chloe noticed a folded paper tucked inside one of the plastic sleeves.
It wasn't part of the old documents.
It was new.
My name was written on the outside.
Maya.
I unfolded it.
There was only one sentence.
Before you decide what kind of person your mother was, find out why she walked away.
Below it was a phone number.
Chloe stared at me.
“You're going to call, right?”
I wasn't sure.
There are moments when curiosity feels like courage.
And others when it feels like standing at the edge of something that could change the way you remember your whole life.
I entered the number into my phone.
Before I could press call, it rang.
The same number.
Chloe's eyes widened.
I answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then a woman's voice.
“Maya?”
I knew immediately.
Evelyn.
“Yes.”
She exhaled.
“I wasn't sure you'd find the letter.”
“Why did you leave that binder?”
“Because I promised your mother something years ago.”
My throat tightened.
“What?”
Another pause.
“That if the truth ever became important to you, I would let you discover it yourself.”
“What truth?”
Her next words were quiet.
“The bakery didn't end because your mother betrayed me, Maya.”
I gripped the phone.
“I never said she did.”
“No.
But that's what the papers will make it look like unless you find the missing page.”
“What missing page?”
“The one your mother kept.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Then how am I supposed to find it?”
Evelyn was silent for several seconds.
“When Laura left the bakery, she took only one thing from the office.
A blue recipe box.”
I looked across the table at Chloe.
She had gone completely still.
Because both of us knew exactly where that box was.
May you like
It had been sitting for six years on the highest shelf of our kitchen cabinet.
And neither of us had ever opened it.
