Chapter 5 — Two Different Lies

I put the letter flat beneath the lamp.

The signature was close enough to fool someone who wanted to believe it.

Lucia would not have wanted to believe it.

That meant she had read it until she did.

“Where was this kept?”

“In a wooden box,” Maria said. “With your letters and some photographs.”

“Who has handled it?”

“Lucia. Miguel. Me. Marco.”

“And now me.”

She nodded.

I moved my hands away.

Marco fetched clear document sleeves from the study. We placed the letter inside one without flattening the creases.

I photographed both sides and called my attorney.

“Daniel. I need someone to examine an old document. Quietly. I also need an independent family relationship test arranged with the mother’s consent.”

He paused.

“Anthony, what has happened?”

“I’ll explain in person. Don’t call anyone from my usual office.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Here.”

After I ended the call, Maria slid another page toward me.

“That one is a copy. Miguel scanned it.”

I recognized my handwriting before I read the words.

Lucia had complained about it once. She said every sentence looked as though I had been interrupted by a fire.

I’ll be home before the leaves turn.

Below that, I had written about an apartment we couldn’t afford and a kitchen table she had seen in a shop window.

I remembered the table.

Four chairs. Blue paint along the edge.

We had stood outside the shop pretending to disagree about it because agreeing made the future feel too close.

“When was this sent?” I asked.

Maria pointed to the date.

Two days before the forged rejection.

“Both reached her?”

“We think so. The envelopes are still in the box.”

I looked at the typed letter again.

No explanation. No argument. No reference to anything we had said to each other.

Just an instruction to disappear.

“Did she try to contact me?”

“Several times, according to notes Miguel found.”

“Where are those?”

“At the apartment. In the box.”

Marco took out his phone.

I stopped him.

“Tomorrow. Nobody goes there tonight without Maria deciding what we need.”

She looked surprised.

“Why?”

“Because we’ve had enough people making decisions around you.”

She folded her hands.

“I can bring it in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

Marco set his phone down.

I asked him to list everyone who had handled my correspondence when I was overseas.

“My father,” I said. “His office. The house staff.”

“Julian helped with the business then,” Marco said.

“So did others. Put down all the names.”

He opened a notebook.

We worked until Mrs. Donnelly appeared at the door.

“The little one is awake.”

Maria stood immediately.

Sophia was sitting on the sofa, hair flattened on one side.

She saw me behind her mother.

“Is it tomorrow?”

“Not yet,” I said.

She frowned.

“I’m hungry.”

That, at least, was a problem I could solve.

In the kitchen, Maria warmed leftover chicken while I discovered that Sophia considered carrots an insult.

I sat across from her with a plate I barely touched.

She held up a piece of bread.

“Daddy cut it like triangles.”

Maria’s knife stopped.

I looked at the bread.

“May I?”

Sophia gave it to me.

I cut it diagonally.

She examined the result, then nodded.

“That’s right.”

Maria resumed what she was doing.

Her shoulders had lowered.

After dinner, she took Sophia upstairs to a guest room. I asked Mrs. Donnelly to bring whatever they needed and told the night supervisor they were guests.

Not staff staying late.

Marco remained in the kitchen.

“We should talk about Queens.”

“Then talk.”

“One of the crew leaders says the order came through Sarto’s office. The office says he misunderstood a discussion about contingencies.”

“Get the original messages.”

“They say it was verbal.”

“Find the person who spoke to him.”

Marco nodded.

“And Carbone?”

“He wants an explanation for today.”

“He can have one tomorrow.”

I returned to the library with Miguel’s pages.

One described his wedding.

Another described Sophia’s first night home.

They handed us a baby and let us leave. Maria looked at me in the car as though I should suddenly know what to do.

I laughed once.

Then I read the next paragraph.

Sometimes she falls asleep on my chest, and I wonder whether you ever held me.

I lowered the paper.

A shadow moved in the doorway.

Maria stood there in a borrowed cardigan.

“Is she asleep?” I asked.

“Finally.”

“Does she usually take that long?”

“She had an exciting day.”

Maria came in and saw the page in my hand.

“He never showed me that one.”

“I can give it back.”

“I meant he kept some of it to himself.”

She sat across from me.

“What did he think of me?”

Her eyes stayed on mine.

“Do you want the honest answer?”

“Yes.”

“He thought you might be kinder in private than you looked in public.”

“Might be.”

“He hoped.”

I waited.

She drew a breath.

“He also read about men who disappeared after crossing you. He saw the photographs outside court. He knew what people in the neighborhood said.”

I looked at my hands.

“So he stayed away.”

“Partly.”

“The other part?”

“His mother had spent years trying to keep him outside this life.”

“She was lied to.”

“Yes. But she wasn’t wrong about every danger.”

I almost answered too quickly.

Then I remembered the pistol.

The way Maria’s knees had bent when she entered my conference room.

“No,” I said. “She wasn’t.”

Maria looked down at the letter.

“I don’t think you’re the only person who lost something here.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

The question deserved better than anger.

“I’m trying to.”

She nodded.

After she left, I called Marco back to the library.

“No one confronts anyone about these letters yet.”

He looked at the names in his notebook.

“Agreed.”

“We preserve what we have. We verify the dates. We check every person who could have sent either message.”

“And if we find him?”

I looked toward the ceiling.

Above us, Sophia was sleeping in a room where I had never expected to hear a child.

“Then I want to know everything he did before he knows we’re asking.”

The next morning, Maria called her neighbor to ask whether she could stop by later and collect the wooden box.

I was in the breakfast room when the call changed.

Her free hand gripped the edge of the counter.

“What do you mean, open?”

Marco came through the doorway.

Maria listened, then shook her head.

“No. Don’t touch anything. We’re coming.”

She lowered the phone.

“Someone broke into my apartment.”

I stood.

“Is your neighbor hurt?”

“No.”

“What’s missing?”

“The television is there. Miguel’s watch is there.”

Her eyes moved toward the library.

“The wooden box is gone.”