Chapter 2 - The Song from the Past
The silence between them felt louder than Nora's previous cries. Henry stared at the boy's sharp cheekbones and the distinct tilt of his dark hazel eyes. He had convinced himself that Mason was simply an opportunist—a kid hoping for a payout from a grieving tech mogul. But that didn't explain the handwriting on the photo. He would know Claire’s handwriting anywhere in the world.
""The melody,"" Henry said, his voice dropping to an urgent murmur. ""When you calmed Nora down. You were humming a lullaby. It wasn't something on the radio. It wasn't a standard nursery rhyme.""
Mason swallowed hard, pulling his worn sleeves over his wrists. ""It's an old French-Canadian folk tune. My mother used to sing it to put my younger sister, Lily, to sleep when we were small. After our mother died, Claire was the one who sang it to me.""
Henry felt a dizzying wave of vertigo. ""Claire grew up in Manhattan. Her father was an art dealer. Her mother died when she was in boarding school in Switzerland.""
A bitter, sorrowful smile touched Mason’s lips. ""That’s what she put on the society pages, wasn't it? That’s what your public relations team told the newspapers when you two had that massive wedding at the estate in Rhode Island."" Mason leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice so the neighboring passengers couldn't overhear. ""Claire's real name wasn't Claire Montgomery. It was Claire Boucher. She was born in an old mill town outside Manchester, New Hampshire.""
Henry sat frozen. He thought back to their early years together. Claire had always been elusive about her childhood. She had claimed her parents were distant, cold, and dead, leaving her with an inheritance she rarely spoke of and wanted no connection to. Whenever Henry had offered to look into her family trust or help trace her ancestral roots, she had gently deflected with a kiss and a playful reminder that their life began the day they met at an art gallery in Boston.
""Why would she lie to me?"" Henry muttered, half to himself, the foundation of his entire twelve-year marriage trembling beneath his feet. ""I loved her. I didn't care about bloodlines or family wealth. I came from nothing myself. She knew that.""
""Because by the time she met you, she had already spent ten years running away from her past,"" Mason said softly. ""Her father wasn't an art dealer. He was an abusive drunk who worked at a machine shop until his liver gave out. When she was eighteen, she ran away to Boston on a bus with eighty dollars in her pocket. She reinvented herself. She worked three jobs, took evening classes, studied high society manners, and built an entirely new persona from scratch. She told me she was terrified that if high society found out she was just a poor girl from a broken trailer park, they would destroy you. And destroy her.""
""And what about you?"" Henry’s voice tightened, his defensive walls snapping back into place. ""Where do you fit into this story? If you're her brother, you would have been born decades after her.""
""I'm not her brother,"" Mason said, looking straight into Henry’s eyes without flinching. ""I'm her nephew. My mother was Claire’s younger sister, Sarah. The sister Claire left behind.""
Henry felt as though the plane had suddenly dropped thousands of feet in sheer turbulence. He looked at Nora, who was sleeping so peacefully, and then at Mason. The boy wasn't a stranger. He was Nora’s first cousin.
""Sarah died three years ago,"" Mason continued, his voice cracking with an old, enduring grief. ""Ovarian cancer. Claire found out through an old friend from the hometown. When Sarah was sick, Claire came back. She walked into our tiny rented apartment wearing designer sunglasses and broke down on her knees. She paid for all of mom's treatments. She paid for the hospice care. She couldn't save her, but she stayed with us until the end. And she promised my mother that she would take care of me.""
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""If she promised that,"" Henry whispered, struggling to piece together the fractured mosaic of his wife's hidden existence, ""then why didn't she bring you home? Why didn't she bring you to our house in Boston?""
Mason’s eyes hardened with painful clarity. ""Because she didn't want you to see what she was hiding until she knew she had enough time to explain it to you herself. But time ran out, didn't it?""
