Nora's Room
Chapter 07 - Nora's Room
Mrs. Alvarez lived above a laundromat in Queens.
She was sixty-eight, five feet tall, and did not care that Evelyn Hart’s face had appeared in magazines.
“You’re late,” she said when Evelyn introduced herself.
Evelyn looked at her watch.
“I’m ten minutes early.”
“I mean by twelve years.”
Mason stood beside Evelyn.
Mrs. Alvarez’s expression softened immediately.
“Mijo.”
He let her hug him.
Evelyn looked away.
There were griefs she had no right to watch.
Nora’s room was on the third floor.
It was smaller than Evelyn’s dressing room.
A narrow bed. A secondhand dresser. Two chairs. A portable fan. A stack of schoolbooks tied with string.
On the wall were photographs.
Mason at six, missing his front teeth.
Mason holding a science fair ribbon.
Nora and Mason sitting on a beach.
Evelyn stared at her sister.
Older.
Thinner.
But alive.
Alive for all those years.
She moved closer.
In one photograph, Nora had the same red scarf their mother once wore.
Evelyn covered her mouth.
Mason stood in the doorway.
“She kept pictures of you too.”
He pointed to the dresser.
In the bottom drawer was a newspaper clipping.
Evelyn at the opening of a women’s shelter.
Another clipping of Evelyn testifying before a state committee.
Another of Evelyn receiving an award.
Every article had been folded carefully.
“She was proud of you,” Mason said.
Evelyn sat on the floor.
“She thought I hated her.”
“No.”
Evelyn looked up.
“She said you were mad.”
“That’s different?”
“To her.”
Mason shrugged.
“She said hate is when you stop hoping.”
Evelyn cried then.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
She cried with her face in both hands while sitting on worn carpet in the room where her sister had raised a child alone.
Mrs. Alvarez left without comment.
Mason sat on the bed.
After a while, he said, “She told me not to be angry at you.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because she said someone was making sure her letters didn’t get through.”
Evelyn’s tears stopped.
“What letters?”
Mason pointed toward the closet.
Behind a box of winter clothes was a plastic storage bin.
Inside were envelopes.
Dozens.
All addressed to Evelyn.
Some at her Manhattan apartment.
Some at the foundation.
Some at Hart Holdings.
Most had been returned.
REFUSED.
UNKNOWN RECIPIENT.
RETURN TO SENDER.
Evelyn picked up one dated nine years earlier.
The handwriting shook.
EVIE, I SAW YOUR INTERVIEW. YOU LOOK STRONG. I HOPE YOU ARE. I AM NOT ASKING FOR MONEY. I AM ASKING YOU TO REMEMBER THE NIGHT MOM DIED. REMEMBER WHAT DAD PROMISED US.
Another:
EVIE, GRANT CAME TO SEE ME. I DON’T KNOW HOW HE FOUND ME. PLEASE BE CAREFUL.
Another:
I HAVE A SON. HIS NAME IS MASON. I WANT YOU TO KNOW HIM SOMEDAY.
Evelyn pressed the letter to her chest.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
“Ms. Hart?”
“Yes.”
“This is Detective Laura Chen with the New York County District Attorney’s Office.”
Evelyn stood.
“How can I help you?”
“We received a complaint this morning involving alleged financial coercion connected to the Hart family trust.”
Evelyn looked at the letters.
“From whom?”
“I’m not authorized to say yet.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Because your name appears on documents we believe may contain a forged signature.”
Evelyn’s heart stopped.
“What documents?”
“A consent executed eleven years ago.”
“For what?”
The detective paused.
“The removal of your sister, Nora Hart, as a beneficiary.”
Evelyn stared at the letter in her hand.
May you like
“I never signed anything like that.”
“I was afraid you might say that.”
