I look at him because he deserves the answer directly. “I’m your mother’s sister. Your Aunt Maya.”
The room goes still. Erin’s toast lowers to her plate. Heath doesn’t move at all. Omar, still loitering behind me, becomes more silent than before.
“My mom didn’t have a sister,” Heath says.
“Yes, she did.”
“No.”
“She did,” I say, gently but without making it sound like a question. “She didn’t get to talk about me much. Maybe not at all. But I knew about you. Both of you.”
Erin’s face changes first, the way open faces do. Hope starts before caution can stop it, then falters because hope is risky, and she has been taught that risk hurts.
“You knew our names?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Your mom sent me pictures when she could.” I reach slowly into the pocket of the robe, then stop when Omar stiffens. “It’s just a photo.”
“Show me,” Heath says.
I take it out with two fingers. It is creased from being folded inside my undercover bag for months, then tucked into the lining of the ugly dress before the auction. I should not have brought it into the operation. Any handler would have told me carrying personal evidence into an undercover assignment was reckless, sentimental, stupid.
I did it anyway. Some rules do not survive grief. I slide the photograph across the floor instead of standing.
Heath gets down from his chair before Erin can grab it. He picks it up, keeping his body angled so he can see both me and the door. In the picture, the twins are maybe six. Erin is missing a front tooth. Heath has one arm around her shoulders and a suspicious look aimed at whoever held the camera.
Alice’s note is on the back:Erin and Heath. Don’t laugh at his face. He was mad because Erin picked the blue shirt first.
Heath turns the photo over and reads the note. Erin slips from her chair and presses against his side to see it. “That’s Mom’s writing.”
I swallow once. “Yes.”
“You knew her?” Erin asks.
“She was my sister.”
Heath looks up. “Then why weren’t you there?”
It is not an accusation. It’s worse. It is a fair question.
I could give him the adult answer. The family answer. The mafia answer. The legal answer. I could tell him Alice chose to go back, that Leon controlled access, that my career put distance between us and danger around us, that every attempt to reach her had to be weighed against whether it would make things worse for her. But none of that belongs on a child’s plate.
“I tried to be,” I say. “But I wasn’t close enough.”
His jaw tightens.
Erin turns the picture over again, touching her mother’s handwriting with one finger. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Omar looks toward the window. I hate him a little less for it.
“Yes,” I say.
Erin nods as if I have confirmed what she already knew, but her eyes fill anyway. Heath hands her the picture and climbs back into his chair with careful control. He does not cry. That worries me more than tears would have.
“Dad said she left,” Erin whispers.
