Nora lives in a small apartment in the Northeast, off Dyer Street. Second floor. There were wind chimes on her balcony.
She let me in without saying anything. She led me to her kitchen. Small and clean. A calendar from a Mexican bakery on the wall. A drawing taped to the refrigerator. A hummingbird. In colored pencil.
Alicia’s.
I set the box down on the kitchen table between us. I opened the lid so she could see inside.
She reached in. She touched the white scarf. Just the edge of it. With two fingers.
Then she closed the lid. And she kept her hand flat on top of it.
“I’m not apologizing,” she said. “I had every right to complain about you.”
“You did,” I said.
Her hand stayed on the box.
“I was her doctor,” I said. “I was responsible for that decision. Her asking me didn’t change that. I should have said no. Or I should have gone to Dr. Patel, and let somebody who wasn’t me decide.”
Nora looked up at me sharply.
“So you admit it,” she said. “You took advantage of her.”
My face went hot.
I still couldn’t honestly defend the marriage. Not anymore. Not to her. Not to myself.
“I should have refused the marriage,” I said. “I know that now. But I didn’t marry her for money, Nora. I didn’t know the money existed.”
“You were in her room every single day.”
“Yes,” I said. “You can tell them that. It’s true. You can also tell them what you knew about the wedding. When you helped with it.”
She pulled her hand back off the box.
“The inheritance changed everything,” she said.
“It raised questions,” I said. “Real ones. I understand why.”
I took the papers out of my jacket pocket. I slid them across the table to her.
She read the lawyer’s letter first. Then the refusal. She checked the dates. Back and forth. Twice.
“This doesn’t prove you didn’t know about the money before,” she said.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t. It only shows when I was officially told. And what I did afterward.”
“So what do you want? You want me to say you’re innocent?”
“I want you to say what you saw,” I said. “That’s all. You knew it wasn’t a romance. You helped with the ceremony. You brought the license. And you don’t actually know whether I expected any money. You can’t know that.”
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.