Chapter 3 - THE TRAIN TICKET
My heart hammered against my ribs, loud and frantic.
I looked at the phone, then at Marco, and finally at Giana, who was watching me with an expression of profound, quiet sorrow.
"My mother wasn't a murderer," I said. My voice shook, but I refused to break his gaze. "She was a maid at a downtown hotel. She worked sixty hours a week until her heart gave out. She didn't kill anyone."
"Then why did she have my father's watch?" Marco asked. The danger in his tone had receded slightly, replaced by a desperate, tight demand for the truth.
"I don't know."
"Show it to me."
I wanted to refuse. I wanted to tell him to get out of my apartment. But the look in his eyes wasn't malice; it was the haunted look of a man who had been searching for a ghost for seventeen years.
I walked into my bedroom, pulled the metal tin from beneath my bed, and brought it to the kitchen counter. I unlocked it with a small brass key.
Inside, resting on a bed of faded tissue paper, was the silver pocket watch.
Marco didn't touch it immediately. He stared at it as if it were a live explosive. Slowly, he reached out, his large fingers tracing the dent near the clasp.
"He dropped it the day I was born," Marco murmured, almost to himself. "It dented the casing. He refused to have it fixed. He said it was a reminder that the best days leave a mark."
Giana stood up from the sofa and walked slowly into the kitchen.
When she saw the watch, her breath caught. Her trembling hand reached out, brushing against the silver chain.
"Elena," Giana whispered.
I froze. "You knew my mother?"
"Of course she knew her," Marco said quietly, picking up the watch. "Your mother wasn't just a maid at a hotel, Nora. Elena was my mother's private nurse. She lived in our home. Until the night my father died."
The kitchen spun slightly. The narrative of my entire life—the poverty, the running, the endless string of cheap apartments, my mother's constant, suffocating fear—suddenly fractured.
"She told me we moved to Chicago because she liked the snow," I breathed, feeling physically sick.
"She ran because the police considered her the primary suspect," Marco said. "And because my family would have killed her."
I stepped back, putting distance between myself and the watch. "If you think she killed him, why are you helping me? Why treat Dom?"
"Because," Marco said, his thumb pressing against the latch of the watch, "the safe in my father's study required two keys. My father had one. My uncle, Vincent, had the other. A nurse couldn't have opened it. I have never believed she did it."
The latch clicked. The face of the watch popped open.
The hands were frozen at exactly eleven-fourteen.
"It's broken," I said numbly. "It has been since I was a child. She told me never to try and fix it. Never to open the back casing."
Marco’s eyes snapped to mine. Without a word, he turned the watch over. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, flat silver money clip, and wedged the edge of it into the microscopic seam on the back of the timepiece.
He applied pressure.
There was a sharp snap, and the silver backing popped off into his palm.
It wasn't a solid piece of metal. The watch had a false back.
Tucked tightly inside the hollowed-out compartment was a piece of heavily folded, yellowed paper.
Marco extracted it carefully with two fingers. He unfolded it on the kitchen counter, smoothing out the deep creases.
It was a train ticket.
A one-way fare from Chicago to Montreal, dated exactly seventeen years ago. The day after Marco's father was murdered.
But it wasn't the destination that made Marco go perfectly, terrifyingly still.
It was the name printed on the passenger line.
Purchaser: Giana Ferraro. Passenger: Elena Wells.
I stared at the ticket, then looked up at Giana.
May you like
The elderly woman was staring at the yellowed paper, her eyes wide, tears spilling over her wrinkled cheeks. The fog that usually clouded her gaze was entirely gone, replaced by a sharp, agonizing clarity.
"I bought it," Giana whispered, her voice trembling but absolute. "I gave her the watch. I told her to run."
