Chapter 4 - THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
Nicholas held the photograph beneath the desk lamp.
Three babies.
Three hospital bracelets.
Three children whose lives had apparently been connected before any of them could remember.
One bracelet clearly read N. Bellomo.
Another had the name Elena Marsh.
The third was partly hidden beneath a blanket.
Charlotte stared at the picture.
“That's not me.”
Her voice sounded smaller than before.
Nicholas turned toward her.
“How can you be certain?”
“Because I wasn't born in Philadelphia.”
“Where were you born?”
“Baltimore.”
Thomas closed his eyes.
Charlotte looked at him.
“Tell him.”
The old butler remained silent.
“Thomas!”
He opened his eyes.
“Your family lived in Baltimore when you were raised there. That doesn't mean you were born there.”
Charlotte stepped back as though he had struck her.
“My parents wouldn't lie about something like that.”
Nicholas laid the photograph beside the blue book.
“Apparently someone did.”
I examined the children's bracelets again.
The photograph was faded, but something about the third crib bothered me.
A small cloth elephant rested beside the baby.
Its ear had been repaired with blue thread.
I recognized that elephant.
Not from the mansion.
From Charlotte's bedroom.
She kept an old stuffed elephant in a glass-fronted cabinet beside her dressing table.
I'd seen it several times while helping prepare her clothes.
“Miss Whitmore,” I said carefully, “did your mother give you a stuffed elephant when you were little?”
Charlotte stared at me.
“Yes.”
“Gray, with one blue ear?”
Her lips parted.
“How do you know that?”
“It's in your bedroom.”
Charlotte gripped the back of a chair.
“My mother said it was the first thing she bought after adopting me.”
Nicholas turned sharply.
“Adopting you?”
Charlotte looked ashamed.
“I never told you.”
“Why?”
“Because it wasn't important.”
Nicholas stared at the photograph.
“It seems important now.”
Charlotte's eyes filled.
“I grew up being told my birth mother didn't want me. My parents loved me. I never wanted to know anything else.”
For a moment, I saw something beneath her arrogance.
A woman who had spent her entire life trying to prove she belonged in wealthy rooms.
Someone who believed affection could disappear the moment people learned where she came from.
Nicholas's expression remained guarded.
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
Then she looked toward the door.
“And I should have told you Vincent contacted me six months before we met.”
The silence was immediate.
Nicholas slowly put down the photograph.
“Explain.”
Charlotte wiped her eyes.
“Vincent introduced us through a charity dinner in Manhattan. He said you were lonely. He said Ethan needed someone.”
Nicholas's face hardened.
“You approached me because my brother told you to?”
“At first.”
“And afterward?”
Charlotte looked directly at him.
“I fell in love with you.”
Nicholas said nothing.
She gave a bitter laugh.
“I know you won't believe that now.”
“Love doesn't excuse what you did to my son.”
Charlotte lowered her eyes.
“No.”
Nicholas returned to the blue book.
Every page contained information, but several entries had been written in code.
Arthur had added notes over the years.
Payments to nurses.
Transfers between charitable foundations.
Names of wealthy donors.
Then Nicholas discovered an entry dated six years earlier.
The week Elena died.
A payment of $240,000 had been made to a medical consulting company.
Its director was Samuel Prescott.
Beside the transaction, Arthur had written:
Not approved. Elena was right.
Nicholas stared.
“My father knew something was wrong.”
Thomas nodded.
“Your wife believed Dr. Prescott was destroying medical records.”
“Why didn't she tell me?”
Thomas looked uncomfortable.
“She tried.”
Nicholas turned.
“What?”
“She left a message for you the afternoon before she died. You never received it.”
Nicholas approached him.
“Why not?”
Thomas's eyes filled.
“Your father told me not to deliver it.”
The room went cold.
Nicholas whispered, “My father?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“He said it would put you in danger.”
Nicholas closed the distance between them.
“And you obeyed him?”
Thomas didn't retreat.
“Yes.”
“Even after Elena died?”
Thomas nodded.
Nicholas looked devastated.
“You watched me bury my wife.”
“I did.”
“You watched my son grow up without his mother.”
Tears rolled down Thomas's cheeks.
“I did.”
Nicholas turned away.
For several moments, the only sound was Charlotte's quiet breathing.
Then I noticed another object tucked into the blue book.
A small photograph of Elena.
She stood outside St. Agnes holding a folded child's drawing.
The photograph had been taken shortly before her death.
On the back was a date.
And one sentence.
Ask Nicholas why his brother wanted the children separated.
Nicholas stared at it.
“What children?”
Thomas shook his head.
“I don't know.”
Charlotte looked at the photograph.
Then her face changed.
“That drawing.”
Nicholas turned.
“What about it?”
Charlotte pointed.
“My grandmother had one like that.”
“Where?”
“In her apartment. She kept it inside her prayer book.”
Nicholas studied her.
“Is Margaret still alive?”
Charlotte nodded.
“She lives at a private assisted-living residence outside Baltimore.”
“Then we're going to see her.”
Daniel immediately checked his phone.
“Sir, we have another problem.”
Nicholas looked up.
“The mansion security system just registered an unauthorized access code.”
“Who used it?”
Daniel's expression darkened.
“Vincent's old code.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
Ethan was at the mansion.
Nicholas was already moving.
“Get my son on the phone.”
Daniel called the guard assigned to Ethan.
No answer.
He tried the second guard.
Still nothing.
Nicholas grabbed his coat.
“Call every man we have.”
We rushed downstairs.
Charlotte followed.
At the entrance, Daniel finally received a message.
He read it twice.
Then handed the phone to Nicholas.
It was a photograph.
Ethan was sitting safely in the kitchen beside the housekeeper.
But something lay on the table in front of him.
A small blue child's drawing.
Nicholas enlarged the image.
The drawing showed a family holding hands beneath a yellow sun.
Three adults.
One little boy.
And a handwritten message across the bottom.
Daddy, I found Mommy's other picture.
Nicholas called the housekeeper.
This time, she answered.
“Mr. Bellomo, Ethan is safe. He's right beside me.”
Nicholas closed his eyes.
“Thank God.”
“Sir, there's something else.”
“What?”
“Your son found the drawing inside an old coat belonging to Mrs. Bellomo.”
Nicholas frowned.
“Which coat?”
“The white winter coat you asked us to preserve after she died.”
Nicholas looked toward Thomas.
The butler stared at the floor.
Nicholas spoke into the phone.
“Don't touch anything else.”
Then the housekeeper added something that stopped him.
“Sir, Ethan says there's another person in the drawing. Someone his mother called Uncle.”
Nicholas looked at the photograph again.
He had assumed the third adult was Vincent.
But Ethan had written a name beside the figure.
A name he said he'd copied from the back of the paper.
UNCLE SAM.
Nicholas's expression changed.
“Samuel Prescott.”
Thomas looked sick.
Then Daniel received a security image from the mansion's rear gate.
A man had entered using Vincent's old access code.
He was carrying a black medical case.
Nicholas stared at the screen.
The man's face was unmistakable.
Samuel Prescott.
But there was another detail.
The doctor had arrived with a woman in a wheelchair.
An elderly woman wearing a blue cross necklace.
Charlotte whispered:
“That's Grandma Margaret.”
Nicholas turned toward her.
Charlotte stared at the photograph.
May you like
Then she said something none of us expected.
“NICHOLAS, MY GRANDMOTHER HASN'T BEEN ABLE TO WALK FOR FIVE YEARS. IF PRESCOTT BROUGHT HER TO YOUR HOUSE, HE'S NOT TRYING TO HIDE HER. HE WANTS HER TO TELL YOU SOMETHING.”
