Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPHI did not believe Lucinda.
Believing her would have been easier.
Hope is dangerous when it arrives seventeen years late.
I had spent most of my life learning to live around my mother’s absence. I remembered her perfume, her laugh, the way she used to tap twice on my bedroom door before entering. I remembered the yellow raincoat she wore when she walked me to school and the terrible cinnamon pancakes she insisted were “a family recipe” even though my father once admitted she had copied them from a magazine.
I remembered losing her.
You do not casually reverse a funeral.
“You said she disappeared,” I told Lucinda. “Now you’re saying she may be alive.”
“Both can be true.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seventeen years and you never looked?”
Lucinda flinched.
“I looked every day for the first two years.”
“Then?”
“Your father begged me to stop.”
“Why?”
“Because people started dying.”
The study fell silent.
Marcus remained beside the door.
Preston stared through the window toward the garden.
I approached Lucinda.
“Names.”
She swallowed.
“Dr. Paul Harris. He treated Elena after the crash. Dead nine months later.”
“How?”
“Boat explosion.”
“Who else?”
“Detective Raymond Cole. He was the first officer who questioned whether your mother’s accident was intentional. Shot during a robbery.”
“Anyone else?”
“A nurse named Maria Alvarez vanished.”
I glanced at Marcus.
He was already entering names into his phone.
Lucinda continued.
“Your father decided the safest thing he could do was publicly accept Elena’s death. Whoever was hunting her needed to believe the family had stopped searching.”
“And you let a nine-year-old child believe his mother was dead.”
“I hated him for it.”
“But you did it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Her voice broke.
“Because he showed me photographs of your school.”
I froze.
“What?”
“Photographs taken through the fence. You on the playground. You getting into your father’s car. You walking into church.”
My anger changed shape.
“They threatened me.”
“Yes.”
Preston finally turned.
“Now you understand why opening that letter was a mistake.”
“No. Now I understand why somebody was terrified enough to stalk a child.”
I went back to the envelope.
“Page four.”
Lucinda shook her head.
“We didn’t remove it.”
“Who had access to the vase?”
“The vase sat in Vittorio’s private residence until he died. Afterward it came here.”
“My grandfather hid the letter?”
“We assumed Anthony did.”
“Why would my father hide a letter to me inside his father’s vase?”
Preston gave a bitter laugh.
“Because nobody dared touch Vittorio’s antiques.”
That made sense.
Until Elisa.
A three-year-old had accomplished what every adult in the Moretti family had been too intimidated to do.
I studied the torn binding edge.
Page four had not simply fallen out.
It had been cut away.
Carefully.
Recently?
Impossible to tell.
Marcus looked up.
“I found Dr. Harris.”
“Dead?”
“Definitely. Fire on a private fishing boat in 2010. Two bodies.”
“The detective?”
“Raymond Cole, killed in 2011.”
“And Maria Alvarez?”
“No death certificate. Last confirmed address was Newark, New Jersey.”
Lucinda inhaled sharply.
“She might still be alive.”
“Find her,” I told Marcus.
Preston laughed without humor.
“You think nobody else has tried?”
“I’m not everybody else.”
He looked almost sad.
“That sounds exactly like Anthony.”
“Good.”
“No, Sebastian. That’s what killed him.”
I stared at Preston.
“What did you say?”
He looked at Lucinda.
She whispered, “You promised.”
“Promises have gotten enough people buried.”
Preston faced me.
“Your father did not die from a heart attack.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“He collapsed in his office.”
“Yes.”
“The coroner confirmed it.”
“The coroner worked for Vittorio.”
I could hear my pulse.
“How did he die?”
“We never proved it.”
“But you suspect?”
“Poison.”
“By whom?”
“That’s the question Anthony was trying to answer when he died.”
I wanted to hit something.
Instead, I sat in my father’s chair.
My mother’s death was a lie.
My father’s death might have been murder.
People connected to both had disappeared.
And someone was still trying to suppress whatever remained.
I unfolded the final two pages.
Page five contained instructions.
If anything happens to me, Sebastian must never be brought into the business until he is old enough to choose.
That sentence hit harder than expected.
My entire adolescence had been shaped by relatives telling me my father expected me to inherit responsibility.
Apparently, he expected the opposite.
He wanted me free.
Page six contained four words underlined twice.
The chapel. Behind Elena.
“What does that mean?”
Lucinda looked confused.
Preston frowned.
“The family chapel?”
“The one on the north property.”
Lucinda stood.
“There’s a portrait.”
“What portrait?”
“Elena.”
Thirty minutes later, rain hammered the estate.
The chapel stood behind an iron gate nearly half a mile from the main house.
Nobody had used it regularly since Vittorio died.
Marcus, Lucinda, Preston, and I entered through a side door.
The air smelled of stone and old candles.
My mother’s portrait hung near the altar.
I had forgotten it existed.
She was thirty-three in the painting.
Young.
Beautiful.
Alive.
For a moment, I forgot the investigation.
I simply looked at her.
Then Marcus said, “Behind Elena.”
We removed the frame.
The stone wall looked ordinary.
Preston pressed along the mortar.
Nothing.
Lucinda examined the frame instead.
“Wait.”
She turned it over.
A strip of brown paper covered the back.
Newer than the canvas.
Marcus cut the edge.
Inside was a photograph.
A Polaroid.
The date written on the bottom was four years after my mother supposedly died.
The woman in the photograph stood beside a lake.
Older.
Thinner.
Hair cut short.
But unmistakable.
My mother.
On the back, two sentences were written.
Anthony—
I’m alive. Stop looking for me.
He found Sebastian.
My knees weakened.
She had survived.
At least until that photograph.
There was something else.
A locker key taped beneath it.
Number 317.
Stamped below the number:
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL.
Marcus looked at me.
“That locker system was replaced years ago.”
“Then why keep the key?”
Preston reached toward it.
I pulled away.
“Not happening.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“You’ve been helping for seventeen years. I’d like to try something different.”
Lucinda examined the photograph.
“She looks terrified.”
I stared at my mother’s handwriting.
He found Sebastian.
Whoever “he” was had known about me.
Perhaps had watched me.
Perhaps still did.
Marcus’s phone rang.
He stepped aside.
A moment later, his face changed.
“What?”
He listened.
Then turned toward me.
“We found the catering worker from the wedding.”
“Where?”
“Two miles from here.”
“Bring him in.”
Marcus didn’t move.
“He’s dead.”
Lucinda covered her mouth.
“How?”
“Car crash.”
Preston shook his head.
“No.”
Marcus continued.
“Vehicle went through a barrier. Police think he lost control.”
“You don’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he sent a text seven minutes before the crash.”
“To whom?”
“Unknown prepaid number.”
“What did it say?”
Marcus looked at me.
“Letter recovered. Missing page still secure.”
Every person in the chapel went silent.
I looked at the six-page letter again.
Someone had page four.
Someone had known about the letter before Elisa broke the vase.
Which meant somebody had opened that vase before the wedding.
“Who prepared the ballroom decorations?” I asked.
Lucinda blinked.
“What?”
“The vase. Who moved it onto that pedestal?”
“The estate staff.”
“Who gave the order?”
She thought.
Then her eyes widened.
“The bride’s grandmother.”
“Whose mother?”
“Carlo’s.”
“My aunt Bianca.”
Preston cursed.
Because Bianca Moretti was not merely another relative.
She controlled the estate.
May you like
She controlled the staff.
And seventeen years earlier, she had been my mother’s closest friend.
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