Chapter 3 - The Cold Rain of Ridgewood
The night air hit Tamson like a physical blow.
The rain had turned into a freezing drizzle.
She walked down the long iron-gated drive of the Riverdale estate.
Her cheap canvas bag slung over one shoulder felt impossibly heavy.
Inside it was everything she owned: two changes of clothes, her nursing textbooks, and the notebook.
And tucked inside the lining of her coat was the photograph.
The single piece of paper that proved the Rallo family had lied.
She reached the outer gate and pushed the heavy metal bar.
It swung open with a slow, metallic groan.
No guards stopped her.
No one chased her down the dark road.
They thought she was just a defeated girl running away into the night.
Let them think it.
Let Evander Rallo sit in his mansion and count his money.
The game had only just begun.
She walked three blocks to the subway station.
The platform was empty except for a stray cat shivering beneath a bench.
Tamson sat down on the hard plastic seat.
Her legs were shaking now that the adrenaline was fading.
She pulled the old black wool coat tighter around her chest.
The blue-stitched button caught the fluorescent light overhead.
Her father's coat.
Her father's locket.
Her father's ruined reputation.
Four years of starvation, exhaustion, and closed doors flashed through her mind.
Every time she had been turned away from a hospital clinic.
Every time a landlord had looked at her application and suddenly found someone else.
It wasn't bad luck.
It was the invisible shadow of the Rallo name keeping her down.
The subway train roared into the station with a screech of iron wheels.
Doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss.
She stepped inside the warm, foul-smelling car.
Only two other passengers were there: a sleeping man in a heavy coat and a woman reading a folded newspaper.
Tamson stared at her reflection in the dark window glass.
Her face looked pale, almost ghostly.
The dark circles under her eyes were bruised purple.
Yet there was something fierce in her expression.
She was no longer just a tired waitress from a Ridgewood diner.
She was a woman armed with the truth.
Thirty minutes later, she climbed the stairs to her apartment.
The building smelled of boiled cabbage and old linoleum.
She unlocked the door with a trembling key.
Ma Reed was still sitting at the kitchen table by the sewing machine.
A single green-shaded lamp illuminated her weathered hands.
She was mending an old pair of trousers.
She looked up as Tamson walked in.
Her sharp eyes took in the canvas bag, the wet coat, and the set of Tamson's jaw.
"You're back early," Ma said quietly. "Did they find out?"
Tamson dropped her bag by the door.
She walked over to the small wooden table.
She pulled the folded photograph from her coat pocket.
She laid it flat on the scarred wood surface.
"They found out," Tamson said. Her voice was steady.
"They threw me out."
Ma adjusted her spectacles.
She leaned over the paper.
Her eyes scanned the typed lines.
Her breath hitched in her throat.
The silence in the small kitchen became absolute.
Outside, a police siren wailed in the distance, fading into the wet night.
Ma touched the signature at the bottom with a trembling finger.
"Abel never drank a drop in his life," Ma whispered.
"I know," Tamson said. "And now I have the proof."
"What do you do with this now, child?"
Tamson looked toward the frosted window.
She thought of Sabine Lockidge, the slick lawyer who stood beside Evander.
She thought of the heavyset man who lost his restaurant in five seconds.
The legal system in this city was built to protect men like the Rallos.
Taking a piece of paper to a district attorney might not be enough.
Money bought silence.
Power bought immunity.
If she wanted justice, she couldn't just hand over a photograph.
She had to break them from the inside out.
"I don't go to the police," Tamson said slowly.
"What do you do then?"
Tamson reached out and touched the blue-stitched button of her coat.
"I find out what happened in that car four years ago."
"That road was dark, Tamson. The rain was blinding."
"It wasn't an accident, Ma," Tamson said.
The words hung in the small kitchen like falling ice.
"What do you mean?"
"Anora remembered something tonight. She held my hand. She gave me the locket."
Tamson leaned closer to the table.
"The car didn't just slide off the parkway. Someone forced them off."
Ma dropped her sewing needle.
It hit the wooden floor with a tiny, sharp click.
Before Ma could answer, a sudden knock rattled the apartment door.
May you like
It was 2:00 in the morning.
No one knocked on their door at 2:00 in the morning unless bad news had finally caught up with them.
