It didn’t seem strange to me at the time.
“Your mother… What did she want from me?”
Enzo sighs again, and, for some reason, it fills me with rage. I’m the one who’s been dragged into this for no apparent reason.
“I think she knew that the main defendant for her murder would be Larousse. And that Larousse and Saidi are good friends, so Saidi would take the case…”
“And that I just won the scholarship to work with Saidi,” I finish.
“Yes.”
“Why did she leave you the note?”
“Maybe my mother didn’t want me to find her, but she did want you to take charge of the case.”
“Why me?”
I can almost hear Enzo shrug his shoulders, with that gesture of indifference that characterizes him.
“Why not you?”
A thousand reasons flood my mind. The first, and also the simplest, is that I don’t have enough experience to defend a potential murderer. Maybe that’s the most important one.
“How did you know she was alive?” I ask, redirecting the conversation.
I’d rather not keep doubting my professional competence, thank you very much.
“I didn’t know.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Enzo.”
He laughs.
“Okay, okay,” he admits. “I suspected it. My mother wouldn’t leave a note for no reason. If there was a note, that had to mean she had been planning something. Something she wanted to warn me about.”
Of course. It would have been too much of a coincidence for Antonia to leave a note for her only son just before she was murdered. And Enzo himself told me that his mother was fond of games.
“It was a riddle,” I say, biting my cheek.
“Touché,” he exclaims. “I interpreted it as a question. What does the girl have to do with me, with Antonia Hawtrey-Moore?”
“The answer was Garros,” I say.
Antonia had it all figured out.
“Exactly. Her only mistake was… I think she didn’t expect me to bring her back from her exile.”
“She came back… for you?”
Not even a woman like Antonia Hawtrey-Moore can leave her son aside in such a delicate situation, right?
“She came back for Eloïse,” she says, sighing. “I’m also sure she came back to help Garros, even if she won’t admit it. He made her little escapade come true. I think she felt indebted.”
“Maybe…”
I’m sure Antonia didn’t come back just for Garros and Eloïse. If she decided to help Garros, to help… Saidi, it was to save her son. Enzo doesn’t seem ready to admit it.
I’m not going to pressure him into it.
