Chapter 7
SEVEN
ISABELLA
I fly out of New York and up to Toronto early Friday morning.
The last mile of road to the lake is unsealed, and I feel every pothole through my spine.
The driver slows, and finally, I see a porch light come on through the trees.
I shouldn’t be here. I could be putting my daughter at risk, but I can’t stay away either.
With what’s progressing in New York, this could be the only time I see Ivy for some time, and so I have to come. There is no other choice.
The car rolls to a stop in front of the house. Stone walls. Painted white shutters. A garden in a riot of colors. The front door opens before I’ve undone my seatbelt, and a small body in a yellow dress comes barrelling out on bare feet and arms up.
“Mamma!”
I’m out of the car and kneeling in the dirt before I realize I’ve moved. She hits me at full speed, and I take the impact with ease. She smells of soap and love, and all I want to do is gobble her up.
“Ivy,” I whisper into her hair. “My beautiful baby girl. I’ve missed you.”
She pulls back. Her front tooth is missing, the top one. She jams a fingertip into the gap and grins. “Tuesday,” she announces. “It fell out in the bowl of Cheerios.”
“Really?” I laugh. I can’t help it, although a part of me also wants to cry because I’ve missed a tooth falling out.
“Straight into the milk.” She is delighted. “Maeve saved it. It’s on the windowsill.”
“But the tooth fairy. Didn’t she come?” I say.
Ivy nods, her eyes bright with excitement. “She still came. We left a note asking if she could wait until I showed you, Mommy, and then she’ll collect.”
“Ahh, I see.” I hug her again and stand, clasp her hand before starting for the house.
Maeve is on the porch. Sixty-three, gray hair braided over one shoulder, a hippie in the true sense of the word.
She nods at me once, which is all Maeve has ever done and all I have ever needed.
We walk into the house together, Ivy by my side, and I breathe in the scent of bread and woodsmoke and the resin of the pine floor, and for the first time since I landed back in New York, my shoulders release.
This is home.
Saturday starts with pancakes, before we walk to the far end of the lake, Ivy counting every stone she picks up as if I’m keeping score.
We read a bedtime story three times because she won’t accept the ending, and when she is finally asleep, the book rising and falling on her chest, I stand in the doorway and memorize her.
Ten toes. One chipped nail. The way her eyelashes still fan over the sweetest cheeks.
My daughter. Mine. And Anthony’s, though the small ache of that stays in the box where it belongs.
I cannot fathom how he could not have wanted her.
Sunday evening comes all too fast. After Ivy is asleep, Maeve and I sit on the porch with mugs of hot chocolate. The lake is black. The frogs are loud. “I may have to go to the Morettis,” I admit. “There’s a new player in town, and they’re impacting the family business.”
She purses her lips and sips her drink.
“It may get ugly, Maeve. Before it gets less ugly.”
She looks at me then, and I know she understands what I’m saying. “All right.”
“I need you to be ready.” I can’t have anything happen to my baby, or Maeve, whom I look up to like a mother.
But if the Russians do intend to fight dirty, that places Ivy at risk.
If they found out about her, they could use her as leverage against me.
I would let the Romeros and our empire fall to save her.
“I’m always ready. We have a safe house that you’ve never been to. Ivy will be secure there.”
A tense silence settles between us, only broken by crickets.
“But Isabella, what do I do if something happens to you?” Maeve asks.
I close my eyes. I’ve been the head of the family for not even a year. I sign off on violence. Perhaps this is my punishment for allowing an underworld family to thrive on underhanded deals. Maybe I don’t deserve to live peacefully. I know I don’t.
“Raise her,” I say. “Disappear. There’s an envelope in the top drawer of the desk in the study upstairs. Money. Passports. The deeds to an apartment in Paris. Don’t come back to Canada or the US, and whatever you do, don’t look for me. If I can, I will come to you.”
Maeve nods once. “And if they find us in Paris, what then?”
I draw a long breath. “Then you need to tell Anthony Moretti that he’s Ivy’s father and he needs to keep her safe.” The request tastes sour on my tongue.
She turns and looks at me, and I can see the shock on her face.
Only I have ever known who Ivy’s father is, and for good reason, so to tell Maeve is a risk I have to take.
If it means keeping my baby safe. “You’re to do this only if everything else fails,” I say.
“No matter what has gone before between us, Anthony will do the right thing. I think.”
“You think.”
“I’m placing a bet, Maeve.” My voice isn't as steady as I’d like. “I hope it’s a bet we never have to make.”
She reaches across and puts her hand over mine. We sit like that for a long time, just the two of us and the frogs, lake, and my daughter sleeping in the room upstairs, unaware of the family she’s been born into. I bite back my tears.
Everything will turn out fine. It has to. There’s no other option.
I kiss Ivy goodbye in the dark, quiet morning. I breathe her in, needing to savor her more than ever this morning. “Soon, my heart. Soon, Mamma will be home for good.”
She murmurs some words I don’t catch and turns her face into the pillow. I swallow a lump in my throat and leave. I hug Maeve goodbye and get into my car. I put on my seatbelt. I look straight ahead down the dark, unsealed road and give my driver the instruction.
Then and only then do I let my emotions run free. I have five hundred miles between the woman I am now and the woman I have to pretend to be, and I use every one of those miles to put my game face back on.