Chapter 14
My mother came to testify.
I saw her in the courthouse hallway, thinner than I remembered, wrapped in a gray coat, her hands shaking around a cane.
For a moment, I was six again.
Motherless in a different way.
She looked at me with wet eyes.
“Clara.”
I did not move toward her.
“Mom.”
Adrian stepped back to give us space.
Elias stood nearby, silent as a guard tower.
My mother swallowed.
“I should have told you everything.”
“Yes.”
“I thought silence was protection.”
“It was a cage.”
She flinched.
“I know.”
In court, she told the truth.
Charles had threatened my father.
Then her.
After the funeral, Beatrice visited our house.
She told my mother that if she tried to challenge Whitmore Holdings, I would disappear next.
My mother ran.
She changed our routines.
Changed schools.
Changed friends.
Then when I met Adrian years later, she panicked.
But by then I was in love.
And she was sick.
“And I was a coward,” she said on the stand.
The words hurt.
But they also opened something.
After court, she approached me.
“I don’t ask forgiveness.”
“Good.”
She nodded, tears falling.
“But I would like time, if you ever have any to give.”
I looked at the woman who had failed me out of fear and loved me badly through it.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll wait.”
That was the first right thing she had said.
So I nodded.
Not yes.
May you like
Not no.
A door unlocked by one inch.
