“I think so,” I said.
“Are you safe with him?”
The question should have been simple. It wasn’t.
No, because Vincent had arranged Daniel’s return.
Yes, because Daniel would never return.
No, because Vincent knew every terrible thing I had done.
Yes, because he had placed his own terrible thing in my hands and called it trust.
No, because he was dangerous.
Yes, because I was too.
“I don’t know how to answer that in a way that sounds normal,” I said.
My mother’s mouth trembled. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed—a small, tired sound. “Normal has not done much for us.”
That almost broke me. I reached across the table and took her hand. Her fingers were warm and rough from years of work that had kept both of us alive.
“Come with me.”
She looked at me.
“Not in the same apartment,” I added quickly. “Not with us. Unless you want to. But near me. France. Anywhere. You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to work for them anymore.”
Her eyes filled, as though the possibility had arrived too gently to be trusted. “Selena.”
“I mean it.”
“With what money?”
“Mine,” I said. Then, because that was not entirely true yet, I added, “His. For now. Mine later.”
My mother’s face changed—pride and concern and old survival instincts moving across it at once. “I don’t want you dependent on a man.”
“I know.”
“Especially not a man like him.”
I looked at her sharply. She smiled sadly. “You think I do not see things because I am quiet.”
The shame that moved through me was old and deserved. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Everything. Katherine. Céline. The years I let her clean other people’s floors while I learned how to look as though I had never seen a mop. The fact that I had wanted Mrs. Montgomery’s approval with more hunger than I had ever wanted justice for my own mother. The fact that Daniel was dead and some part of me felt relieved. The fact that I had become someone she might not recognize if she knew the whole truth.
“I don’t know,” I said.
My mother squeezed my hand. “Then don’t apologize until you do.”
I laughed through something that felt dangerously close to tears. She looked past me toward the main house. “I used to think if I worked hard enough here, you would get far away from what we ran from.”
“I did.”
