Conversations With Mothers

Seraphina did not go home in the morning.

She went to Claridge's reception, asked for room four oh two, and went up.

Catalina opened the door looking like a woman who had not slept either. She wore a robe. Her hair was undone. She looked, for the first time, like Seraphina's mother and not like a stranger.

"You came back."

"I came back."

"Come in."

Seraphina came in.

She sat in the same chair she had sat in yesterday. Catalina poured tea again. They sat in silence for a long moment, and the silence this time was not hostile. It was the silence of two people who had decided to try.

"I have questions," Seraphina said.

"I will answer all of them."

"What is the family business."

"Voss Holdings. Private equity. Real estate. Some very old industrial holdings in Switzerland and Germany. Your father's wife inherited none of it. She killed herself the year after he died. The estate has been managed by a board for fourteen years. The board has been waiting for a Voss heir to come of age and assume control. There is no other Voss heir."

"How much."

"At current valuations, four point two billion euros. Plus property. Plus art. Plus a vault in Geneva I have not opened in twenty years."

"And it is mine."

"It is yours and Rose's. Equally. The terms of the trust make no distinction between you. If Rose can be brought into the family without harming you or Luna, she has a right to her share. If she cannot, then it is yours alone."

Seraphina set her cup down.

"I do not want it."

"You do not have to take it. But if you refuse it, the board reverts the assets to a charitable trust selected by your father's lawyers, who have selected, over the years, exactly the kind of charities Konstantin would have approved of. Charities that benefit men like him. I am asking you to take it because the alternative is that his money continues to do harm in his name for another century."

"That is a lot to ask of someone over breakfast."

"I know."

Seraphina rubbed her temple.

"What do you want from me, exactly."

"I want three things. I want to be allowed to know my granddaughter, on whatever terms you set. I want you to consider the inheritance, on your timeline, with no pressure. And I want to help you handle Rose without anyone in this family getting hurt."

"Without me getting hurt."

"Without anyone."

Seraphina looked at the floor.

"I am tired."

"I imagine you are."

"Mrs. Voss."

"Catalina, please."

"Catalina. I cannot promise you anything today. I cannot tell you whether Luna will know you. I cannot tell you whether I will take the inheritance. I cannot tell you what is going to happen with Rose. I do not know who I am from one hour to the next anymore."

"That is honest. Honest is enough for today."

"I will come back tomorrow."

"I will be here."

Seraphina stood up.

At the door she paused.

"Catalina."

"Yes."

"Did you ever come close to introducing yourself to me. In all those years."

Catalina looked down at her teacup.

"Once. The afternoon Iris died. You sat on a bench outside the hospital. You were sixteen. You did not cry. You sat and you stared at the parking lot for two hours. I sat across the parking lot in a car and I had my hand on the door handle for an hour and twenty minutes. I could not make myself open it."

"Why."

"Because I had promised. And because I was afraid that the version of you I had imagined for sixteen years would not survive meeting the actual woman you were going to be. I have thought about that afternoon every day since."

"You should have opened the door."

"I know."

Seraphina nodded.

"I will see you tomorrow."

"Yes."

She left.

Out on the street, in the cold London morning, she stood on the curb and held herself together for the cab ride home. She did not know yet what she felt. But she had stopped wanting Catalina to disappear, and that was a thing she had not expected to lose this morning.

In the cab she took out her phone and called Lucas.

"Sera."

"Lucas."

"How did it go."

"I have a sister. And a mother. And four point two billion euros sitting in a Swiss bank if I am willing to claim it."

Lucas was quiet for a long moment.

"Sera. Are you sitting down."

"I am in a cab."

"That counts."

"Lucas. I do not know what to do."

"Then do nothing today. Today is not the day to make a decision about four point two billion euros. Today is the day to sit in your kitchen and drink a cup of tea and play with your daughter and let yesterday have been yesterday. Whatever Catalina is offering you, she has been offering it for thirty one years. It will still be there next week."

Seraphina pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the cab window.

"Lucas."

"Yes."

"Do you know what the worst part of being abandoned at birth is."

"Tell me."

"It is not being abandoned. It is finding out years later that you were watched. That every birthday you had alone, there was a woman across the parking lot deciding not to come to you. That every cry your foster mothers ignored, there was a check arriving in someone else's account that should have been yours. That all the suffering you thought was nobody's fault was actually somebody's choice."

He did not answer.

"I am tired, Lucas."

"I know."

"I am going to go home and hug my child."

"Good. Do that. And call me tomorrow."

She hung up.

The cab kept driving. London slid past the window. Rain on the glass. Damien at home in her kitchen. Luna upstairs.

She was tired but she was not alone.

That was new.