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“What do you want to know?” she asks in a hushed voice.
“My knowledge of the situation is second-hand,” I confess. “I’ve never felt the need to delve into it further, and I’m not here to seek her out. I just have some questions. I’d like to hear your thoughts on why she left.”
She’s quiet for a very long time. So long, I don’t know that she’ll even answer me. Her fingers have a death grip on the edge of the chair. She’s not comfortable with me, and I don’t know if I’ll ever disarm her.
“You don’t know me very well, Mrs. Hudson.” I lean back against the chair, considering my words carefully. “But I can assure you I’m a man of my word. Something I should hope I’ve proven by now, given that you’ve had regular visits with Nino. Whatever you tell me today will stay between us. I’m not here to tarnish your reputation further. I’m not here to track your daughter down. I simply want to know the truth.”
She considers me for a moment, then gestures to the piano. “May I?”
I nod, and she rises from her seat, moving to the bench. She sits down and starts to play, humming along as she does. It’s an odd thing to do, but I suspect the music calms her nerves.
“She didn’t leave me,” she says after a few minutes, the words hanging between us. “And she never would have left her son.”
I stare at her back, confused by her statement. “What are you implying?”
She turns to look at me, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’m implying that your friend is a liar. I don’t know where Elizabeth is, but I know she didn’t abandon her baby. She didn’t run away. Wherever she is, she’s dead. I accepted that a long time ago.”
Her candor leaves me speechless. I expected her to express her dislike of Enzo, but I never expected her to accuse him of lying. It troubles me, adding to a long list of growing uncertainties about the man I thought I knew. I also have to consider that Mrs. Hudson is a grieving mother who doesn’t want to believe that her daughter could abandon her. Enzo courted Elizabeth for a year. If there was any indication of a problem, I have to wonder why she never thought to address it during that time. The Society abides by ancient philosophies when it comes to dating and marriage. Women are expected to remain pure for their husbands. Agreements are often made, and arranged marriages aren’t uncommon, but the family always has a right to refuse the match.
“Is it out of the realm of possibility that she simply wasn’t ready to be a mother?” I ask. “That she was ashamed of what the other members might think once they realized the child was had out of wedlock?”
“No.” Mrs. Hudson looks me dead in the eye, her expression leaving little doubt to her uncertainty on the matter. “Elizabeth wanted to be a mother more than anything else in this world, just not by him. She was getting ready to break it off, but she was scared.”
“Why? She had the right to do so if that was her wish.”
“Because she was in love with someone else, and that man turned up dead a week before she disappeared.”
“Peace be with you, Gwen.” I make the sign of the cross over her remains one last time before sealing up the cremation chamber.
I’m not a particularly religious man. Catholicism heavily influences The Society, and I was raised in that environment, but I always found it a little hypocritical. We were expected to attend Catholic schools, go to mass, and extol the virtues of the church in our daily lives. Essentially, what those virtues boiled down to were wealth, power, and influence. As long as we showed up, donated our money, and asked for forgiveness, it didn’t matter what we did in our free time. That became evident to me over the years as I watched my brethren lie, steal, and cheat everyone but themselves.
Men could be forgiven for being weak. Their extramarital dalliances were to be expected, and wives were taught to turn a blind eye. As long as their households were abundant and they had their reputation, they were deemed righteous.
Gwen was a devoted wife and mother who followed the rules for decades. She kept her mouth shut until that silence began to choke her to death. While her husband partook in sins of the flesh with every other woman he could manage, she stayed home and raised the children, drowning herself in pills and booze.
I was fifteen years old when she came to my room in the middle of the night and asked me to kill him. I suppose she saw something in me that others didn’t. She recognized the darkness, and she knew I could do it because when I looked at him, all I saw was a coward like my father.
