But she needs to know I wasn’t watching her because I was watching my enemy. That’s what she believes. It shouldn’t matter, but I don’t want her to worry I’m going to cut her throat in the middle of the night.
"I knew your mother," I say. The words feel like I’ve just released a breath I’ve been holding for eight years. “She asked me to keep you safe. I told her I would.”
She goes very still.
“You knew my mother?” she whispers.
"Not well. Not for long." This is the part I have to calibrate. There are things she doesn't need to know in a doorway when she's reeling from the conversation with her father.
The room is very quiet. I wait for her to ask when Elena asked. I won’t tell her. I don’t know if I’ll ever tell her.
"That's why you were there. That night."
"Yes. And like I said, it’s my club.”
"You'd been watching me."
"I had someone watching you. There's a difference."Small one."I didn't intend to be the one in that alley.”
I watch her process this. The quieter she gets, the more carefully she's thinking.
“How did you know my mother?”
“Same circles.”
She nods like that answer is enough.
“How old are you?”
I almost smile. My wife is asking how old I am.
“Forty-one.”
She nods like I confirmed something.
“Did you—were you and my mother?—”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. I know what she’s asking. It might be fun to tease her, but now isn’t the time.
“No. I had no romantic entanglement with your mother.”
Her shoulders sag with relief.
"What did she say? Exactly."
"She said you were good. That the world would destroy you if someone didn't watch." I meet her eyes. "She was wrong about you, for what it's worth. You'd have survived regardless."
She walks to the window and stands with her back to me, looking out at the street. I let her have it. I can see it in the set of her shoulders, the way they drop just slightly. The way her hand comes up and presses flat against the glass.
She's not looking at the street. She's somewhere else entirely. Her mother's last moments were spent making sure her daughter would be safe. She didn’t know until now.
I want to go to her. A single touch. Confirmation she's not alone in this world. I stay where I am. She needs to have this without me in it.
When she turns back, she's pulled herself together.
Mostly.
"You should have told me,” she says.