Chapter 3: What the Notebook Was Never Supposed to Say
Tessa's eyes dropped to the photograph again.
Eda's face.
Younger, but unmistakably her.
The same broad hands.
The same way she held herself, slightly turned toward the person beside her, as if she were about to say something important.
"How long did you know her?" Ronan asked.
"Six years.
She taught me to cook.
I went to her house every afternoon after my shift." Tessa looked up.
"She never mentioned your mother.
She never mentioned anyone named Callahan."
"She wouldn't have." Ronan sat back down.
He didn't look angry anymore.
He looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
"Eda was careful.
She was always careful."
"Careful about what?"
He didn't answer immediately.
He picked up the photograph and turned it face-down on the table.
"My mother's name was Cora Callahan.
She d*ed fourteen years ago.
The official finding was an accident.
A fall on the stairs of our house on Prytania Street." He paused.
"I was nineteen.
I found her."
Tessa said nothing.
"I never believed it was an accident.
The stairs were wide.
The railing was solid.
My mother was careful about everything." His jaw moved.
"There were two people in that house that evening besides my mother.
One of them was a man named Gerald Voss."
Tessa went very still.
"Voss," she said.
"Victor Voss's father.
Gerald was my mother's business attorney at the time.
He handled the estate accounts." Ronan looked at her directly.
"He was also the man who signed the paperwork transferring sixty percent of my mother's assets to a holding company three days before she d*ed."
The room was completely silent.
"And the other person in the house?" Tessa asked.
Ronan was quiet for a moment.
"That's what I've spent fourteen years trying to confirm."
Tessa looked at the overturned photograph.
Then at the leather notebook still tucked under her arm.
She set it on the table.
"Eda left me this.
She said it was recipes." Tessa opened it to the single handwritten page.
"There's only one.
And she wrote something underneath it."
Ronan leaned forward and read the line in faded blue ink.
*Make this for the man who thinks he has forgotten.*
His hand came flat onto the table.
"She knew," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"She knew what?"
"That I would stop eating.
After my mother d*ed, I couldn't—" He stopped.
Started again.
"My mother made that dish every Sunday.
After she was gone, every time I tried to eat it somewhere else, it was wrong.
Eventually I stopped trying." He looked at the empty bowl still on the table.
"Eda knew that.
Which means she knew my mother well enough to know things that were never made public."
Tessa turned the notebook over in her hands.
"There might be more."
"What do you mean?"
"I never looked past the recipe page.
I assumed the rest was blank." She began turning pages carefully.
The first several were empty.
Then, near the back, tucked between two pages that had been folded together and sealed with a strip of dried wax: a single folded sheet of paper.
Tessa's fingers hesitated.
Ronan's eyes were on her hands.
She broke the seal.
Unfolded the paper.
It was a letter.
Handwritten.
Dated eleven months before Eda passed away.
The letter began: *If Tessa is reading this, then I am gone and I did not find the courage to say it while I was living.
I am sorry for that.
I am sorry for more than that.*
Tessa's throat closed.
Ronan reached across the table.
"May I?"
She handed it to him.
He read it in silence.
His face changed twice.
Once when he was halfway through.
Once at the end.
He set the letter down.
"She was there," he said quietly.
"The night my mother d*ed.
Eda was in the house."
Tessa pressed her hand over her mouth.
"She didn't cause it," Ronan said.
"The letter says she came to warn my mother.
She had found out about the asset transfer.
She came to tell her that Gerald Voss was stealing from her." He paused.
"She was too late.
When she arrived, my mother was already at the bottom of the stairs.
Gerald Voss was standing over her."
"Did she go to the police?"
Ronan's expression answered that before he spoke.
"She was a Black woman in her sixties who had just walked into a wealthy white man's house uninvited and found his client d*ad on the floor.
Voss told her that if she said a single word, he would make certain she was charged." He folded the letter carefully.
"So she kept quiet.
For fourteen years, she kept quiet.
And then she gave everything she knew to a twenty-seven-year-old waitress in a blue tin and a notebook, and she trusted that somehow it would find its way to the right person."
The elevator at the end of the hall made a soft sound.
Briggs stepped into the doorway.
His face was different from before.
Tighter.
"Sir.
We have a problem downstairs."
Ronan stood.
"Danny Price," Briggs said.
"The kitchen assistant.
He's gone.
And we found something in the consommé that was already plated before the waitress started cooking."
Ronan looked at Tessa.
Then back at Briggs.
"What did you find?"
May you like
Briggs glanced at Tessa, then back at his employer.
"Something that wasn't food."
