Chapter 4 - THE BOY WHO DISAPPEARED FROM THE FAMILY ALBUM
“My mother told me she was an only child.”
I barely recognized my own voice.
Vanessa stood on the other side of Luca's desk, her face drained of color.
“She may have wanted you to believe that.”
“Why?”
Vanessa didn't answer.
I looked at Charles.
He was studying the envelope addressed to my mother.
“Did you know about Daniel Carter?”
He hesitated.
“I knew Anthony had been helping two young people in the early nineties. I didn't know their relationship.”
Luca folded his arms.
“Start with what you do know.”
Charles took off his glasses.
“Anthony became involved in a dispute over a building on the South Side. The property was occupied by several families, including the Carters.”
I remembered the photograph.
The brick apartment building.
The cracked front steps.
The girl with my mother's smile.
“Victor Bellini wanted to buy it?” I asked.
Charles nodded.
“He was assembling several properties for a redevelopment project.”
“And my family wouldn't sell?”
“According to Anthony's notes, the Carter family had a disputed ownership interest that complicated the project.”
Luca frowned.
“Why would my father care?”
“Because Victor asked him to help resolve it.”
The words hung in the air.
Luca looked almost physically wounded.
“My father was involved?”
Charles didn't soften the truth.
“At the beginning, yes.”
Vanessa suddenly spoke.
“Anthony didn't know what my father was planning.”
“How do you know?” Luca asked.
“Because he told me.”
Everyone turned toward her.
She swallowed.
“When I was nineteen, I found a photograph in my father's office. Anthony was standing outside that building beside a woman I didn't recognize.”
She looked at me.
“It was your mother.”
I felt cold.
“What did he tell you?”
“That he'd made a terrible mistake and spent years trying to repair it.”
Luca stared at her.
“You knew this before we got engaged?”
“Not all of it.”
“But enough to recognize Emily's mother.”
Vanessa looked toward me.
“Yes.”
I felt the room tilt.
Ten months.
For ten months, I'd cleaned her bedroom.
Carried her luggage.
Prepared her coffee.
And listened while she complained that housekeepers were becoming difficult to find.
All that time, she'd known my mother's name.
“Did you hire me because of her?”
Vanessa's eyes filled.
“No.”
“Did you recognize my name when I applied?”
She hesitated.
That was answer enough.
I took a step backward.
“Oh, my God.”
Luca looked furious.
“Vanessa, explain.”
“Your household manager had already selected her. I saw the application afterward.”
“And said nothing?”
“I thought it was coincidence.”
I shook my head.
“You could have asked.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
She looked directly at me.
“That your mother might tell you what my father had done.”
The room became quiet.
Isabella slid off the sofa.
She came to me without speaking and slipped her small hand into mine.
That simple kindness nearly broke me.
I knelt beside her.
“Sweetheart, can you wait with Daniel in the hallway for a minute?”
She shook her head.
“Are you leaving?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
I squeezed her hand.
“I promise I'll tell you before I go anywhere.”
She nodded.
Luca gently guided her toward Daniel Russo, who took her to the sitting room across the hall.
When the door closed, Charles opened Anthony's notebook again.
“I think we need to understand Daniel Carter before we confront Elizabeth.”
He turned several pages.
The entries became more personal.
Anthony had written about a sixteen-year-old boy who worked after school at a garage.
A boy who wanted to become a mechanic.
A boy who kept challenging Victor Bellini's representatives when they pressured tenants to leave.
Then came a date.
October 11, 1994.
Daniel says Victor's men are threatening the families. I have warned Victor to stop.
Three days later, another entry.
Fire at the property. Daniel missing. Elizabeth hospitalized.
My eyes burned.
“He died?”
Charles looked at the next page.
“No death certificate is mentioned.”
Vanessa frowned.
“My father said Daniel ran away.”
“After a fire?” Luca asked.
“He said Daniel blamed himself.”
I shook my head.
“My mother would have searched for him.”
Charles turned another page.
“She did.”
He read aloud.
Elizabeth refuses to leave the hospital until someone finds her brother. Police believe he escaped before the fire spread.
My hand went to my mouth.
My mother had spent her entire life avoiding stories about her childhood.
Whenever I asked about her family, she said there was nothing worth remembering.
Now I understood why photographs sometimes made her cry.
Luca gently took the notebook.
He studied the final entry.
“There's more.”
He read it silently.
Then looked at Charles.
“My father met Daniel six months after the fire.”
Charles leaned forward.
“What?”
Luca turned the notebook around.
April 1995. Daniel came to see me. He refuses to contact Elizabeth until Victor's people stop looking for him.
My heart pounded.
“He was alive.”
“At least then,” Luca said.
I grabbed the edge of the desk.
“Why wouldn't he contact my mother?”
Vanessa looked away.
I turned toward her.
“You know.”
She shook her head.
“Emily—”
“You know something.”
“My father told me Daniel stole money from one of his businesses.”
Charles looked sharply at her.
“What money?”
“Almost two hundred thousand dollars. He claimed Daniel took it before the fire.”
Luca stared.
“A sixteen-year-old mechanic stole two hundred thousand dollars?”
Vanessa looked miserable.
“I didn't say I believed it.”
But I could see another possibility forming.
Perhaps Daniel hadn't stolen money.
Perhaps he'd discovered it.
Charles seemed to reach the same conclusion.
“Anthony's notes mention payments made to shell companies. Daniel may have found records connecting Victor to those payments.”
Luca turned toward the cabinet.
“The missing object.”
Everyone looked at the clean rectangular mark in the dust.
Something the size of a ledger had recently been taken.
Charles nodded.
“If Daniel kept evidence, Victor would have wanted it.”
I looked at Vanessa.
“Did your father send you here to find it?”
Her silence lasted too long.
Finally, she whispered, “He told me there was a ledger.”
Luca closed his eyes.
“Vanessa.”
“I was trying to keep him out of prison.”
“And what were you willing to do to accomplish that?”
She looked toward the hallway where Isabella had gone.
For the first time, she seemed unable to meet his eyes.
“I didn't think it would hurt anyone.”
I felt anger rising in my chest.
“It already has.”
Charles reached into the cabinet again.
Behind the notebooks lay a flat wooden frame.
It held an old photograph of Anthony, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Daniel.
The four of them stood beside a picnic table in a park.
Daniel was smiling.
His arm rested around my mother's shoulders.
And around his neck hung a small silver medallion shaped like a compass.
I stared at it.
I'd seen that necklace before.
Not in a photograph.
In my mother's bedroom.
She kept it wrapped in a handkerchief inside the biscuit tin.
“She has his necklace,” I whispered.
Luca looked at me.
“Then she may know more than we've discovered.”
I shook my head.
“No. If Daniel gave it to her, she would have told me.”
Vanessa spoke so softly I almost missed it.
“Unless someone else returned it.”
I turned.
“What?”
She swallowed.
“My father received a package in 2001. Inside was a compass necklace and a note.”
My heart began hammering.
“What did the note say?”
May you like
Vanessa looked directly at me.
“Tell Elizabeth her brother kept his promise.”
