An Empty Coffin

Marco opened the original recording and advanced it frame by frame.

The reflected man turned. For a second, his face was clear enough for Elena to see the resemblance.

Lorenzo touched the screen.

“That is Matteo.”

“I agree,” Marco said.

“Was there a body in the coffin?” Elena asked.

Lorenzo shook his head.

“The boat burned before anyone could reach it. They recovered his watch strap and part of his jacket. My father arranged the funeral.”

“Then you never saw him dead.”

“I never saw his body.”

The answer seemed to cost him something.

On the screen, Matteo looked toward the street, lifted one hand to Sofia, and walked away.

Alive. Elena could see that Lorenzo was trying to accept the simple physical fact of it.

“Play it again,” he said.

Marco obeyed.

Elena watched Lorenzo instead of the recording. His jaw was locked, but the hand resting on the desk trembled.

She put her fingers over his.

He looked down as if he had forgotten she was there.

“Find the car he came in,” he told Marco.

“We’re checking the street cameras.”

“Have you located Sofia?”

“A clinic near Turin confirmed she is there. Her assistant answered the number we found.”

“Tell her we’re coming.”

Marco hesitated. “She asked whether Elena would be with you.”

Lorenzo’s hand tightened beneath hers.

Elena answered before he could.

“I will be.”

Outside the security office, he stopped her.

“You don’t have to put yourself in front of her again.”

“She spoke to my child without my knowledge. I want to know why.”

“She could have an accomplice waiting.”

“Then bring your guards. I am still going.”

He studied her face.

Years ago, he would have told her the decision had already been made. She could almost hear him considering it.

Finally, he nodded.

“We leave tomorrow morning.”

Elena went to find Mia.

Her daughter was in the kitchen, helping Rosa cut soft dough with a biscuit cutter. Flour covered the front of Lorenzo’s borrowed shirt.

“Mommy, mine is a horse.”

Elena looked at the shapeless biscuit.

“It is a very handsome horse.”

Lorenzo appeared behind her.

Mia held up a floury hand. “You can make one, too.”

He approached the table but did not sit.

She caught his finger.

“Are you sad?”

He looked down at her.

“I am a little sad.”

“Did somebody take your biscuit?”

Rosa turned toward the oven with suspicious haste.

“No,” Lorenzo said. “It is something else.”

Mia offered him the horse.

“You can have mine when it’s cooked.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then bent to kiss her forehead.

“Thank you.”

Elena stayed beside him after Mia returned to her dough.

She had once thought his silence meant indifference. Now she could see the effort in it, the way he held himself carefully while the child was looking.

That evening, Elena returned to the staff apartment to pack Mia’s overnight things for Rosa.

She found a folded sheet of paper beneath her door.

For a moment, she could not make herself touch it.

Then she saw Rosa’s handwriting.

The nursery has a proper little bed. You can both use it. The plumbing here makes terrible noises.

Elena laughed shakily.

She had been ready to see a threat in an offer of clean sheets.

Mia ran ahead into the corridor carrying her rabbit slippers.

At the foot of the main stairs, Lorenzo was speaking on the telephone.

“I want every entry checked,” he said. “Nobody approaches her without her mother’s knowledge.”

He saw Mia and ended the call.

She pointed upward. “Rosa says I can sleep in a big bed.”

“I heard.”

“Will you come and see it?”

He followed them upstairs.

The nursery smelled of fresh linen and the lemon polish Rosa favored. Someone had placed a little wooden desk beneath the window and filled a shelf with picture books.

Elena recognized the blue armchair.

It had stood in Lorenzo’s apartment in Genoa.

She had sat in it with her feet in his lap while he pretended to read.

“You kept that chair,” she said.

He looked at it.

“It was comfortable.”

The answer was deliberately flat.

Mia climbed onto the bed and bounced once.

“You need to test the chair, Mommy.”

Elena sat.

Lorenzo remained by the window.

For the first time since her return, she imagined what it would have been like to enter this room pregnant, to argue about curtains while he pretended not to care, to watch him carry their daughter through the doorway on the day they came home.

She looked down at her hands.

“I’m sorry you missed it,” she said.

He did not pretend to misunderstand.

“Which part do you mean?”

“Every word of it was true.”

Mia crawled into her lap, and he turned away before Elena could see his expression.

Later, when their daughter was asleep, he came back with tea.

Elena took the cup carefully.

“I don’t usually drink this anymore.”

“You used to.”

“I know.”

He sat on the edge of the desk.

“Tell me something about her that isn’t in a photograph.”

She thought for a moment.

“She hates the skin on warm milk. If she offers you the last strawberry, she has probably already bitten it. She gets frightened when the washing machine spins, but she tells people she’s protecting me from it.”

Lorenzo’s mouth softened.

“She likes to know where I am,” Elena added. “If she wakes up and cannot see me, she panics.”

“Because you moved so much?”

“Perhaps.”

He nodded slowly.

“I won’t make her another promise I cannot keep,” he said.

Elena looked at the sleeping child.

“She believes you already.”

“That is what makes it difficult.”

His phone vibrated. He read the message, and the warmth left his face.

“What happened?”

“Sofia confirmed the meeting.”

“Did she say anything else?”

He handed her the phone.

The message was short.

Please tell Elena I did not show Mia the photograph to frighten her. I was trying to undo what I had done.

Elena read it twice.

There was an attachment beneath it: a photograph of an envelope addressed to her, in a man's unfamiliar handwriting.

At the top of the message Sofia had added one more sentence.

Carlo knew about the baby before you left.

Elena looked up at Lorenzo.

He was staring at his father's name.