“Are you all right, Mom?” Noah asked softly, taking the umbrella handle from my grip to shield my shoulder from the spray.
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“I should be asking you that question, sweetheart,” I replied, looking up into the strong, handsome face of my boy.
“Finding out that your father is a titan of commerce who abandoned you is not an easy burden for an eighteen-year-old to carry,” I added.
Noah smiled, a gentle, ironic tilt of his lips that was entirely his own, free of the predatory arrogance of the Moretti line.
“He didn’t abandon me, Mom; he abandoned an idea of you, and he got trapped in a cage made of his own vanity,” Noah observed.
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“I watched his face when you spoke about him dying on the stage,” Noah continued, his eyes watching the dark silhouette of Widener Library.
“He wasn’t angry because he was insulted; he was terrified because he realized that to us, he truly does not exist,” Noah deduced.
