Chapter 4 - SOFIA’S FIRST CHILD
Dominic held the little red mitten in his palm.
It weighed almost nothing.
Yet it changed the room more completely than the photograph had.
“My mother never had a daughter.”
Walter’s eyes did not leave the mitten.
“She did.”
“When?”
“1979.”
Eight years before Dominic’s birth.
“Where is she?”
Walter said nothing.
That silence produced the worst answer first.
“Did she die?”
“No.”
Dominic stared at him.
“Then where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Cassandra stepped forward.
“Dominic, this has nothing to do with my father.”
He looked at her.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Lucia wasn’t in the papers I found.”
“What papers?”
Cassandra exhaled.
For the first time that night, she seemed tired rather than defensive.
“My father kept a cedar box in his apartment.”
Dominic remembered Victor Vale clearly.
A polished man who never loosened his tie.
He had died four years earlier.
“He told me never to open it,” Cassandra continued. “After he died, I did.”
“And?”
“There were copies of checks from Moretti companies to the Vale Foundation. A photograph of Anthony. Daniel Caruso’s name. Room 314. Walter’s name.”
Emily looked at her.
“And that’s when you started searching this house?”
“No.”
Dominic’s voice went cold.
“Don’t lie again.”
Cassandra looked at him.
“Not immediately.”
“When?”
“When my mother received an envelope six months ago.”
That caught everyone.
“What envelope?”
“No return address.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“What was inside?”
Cassandra looked at the mitten.
“A photocopy of the photograph Walter kept.”
Silence.
Someone else had the picture.
Or had access to it.
Walter whispered, “That’s impossible.”
“Apparently not.”
“Was there a message?” Emily asked.
Cassandra nodded.
“One sentence.”
“What?”
Cassandra looked directly at Dominic.
“Ask the Morettis what happened to the girl before the boy.”
Walter sat down hard.
Rose whispered, “Lucia.”
Dominic watched Walter.
“You knew the girl mattered.”
“I knew Anthony feared someone discovering her.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
“Who was she?”
Walter rubbed his forehead.
“Sofia was twenty-two when Lucia was born.”
Dominic calculated.
His mother had been thirty when he was born.
“Anthony was the father?”
Walter looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Then why hide her?”
“He didn’t.”
Dominic frowned.
“For the first three years, Lucia lived with them.”
Emily quietly asked, “What happened?”
“A kidnapping.”
Dominic’s face changed.
Walter continued carefully.
“Sofia took Lucia to a department store downtown. A woman distracted her. When she turned back, the stroller was empty.”
Cassandra looked horrified despite herself.
“They never found her?”
“No.”
“Police?”
“Anthony did not trust them.”
Dominic laughed without humor.
“Of course he didn’t.”
“He used everyone he knew.”
“And failed.”
Walter nodded.
“For years.”
Rose touched the red mitten.
“Sofia carried the matching one in her purse.”
Dominic looked at her.
“You knew?”
“I treated Sofia during a miscarriage in 1983. She told me about Lucia.”
That explained the mitten being near Room 314.
But not why it was inside Daniel Caruso’s cabinet.
“Why would my biological father have anything connected to Lucia?”
Walter closed his eyes.
“That part I don’t know.”
Dominic turned to Cassandra.
“What did the anonymous sender want from your mother?”
“Nothing.”
“No demand?”
“No money. No meeting.”
“Then why send it?”
“To scare her.”
“Or warn her,” Emily said.
Cassandra looked at the maid.
For once, without contempt.
“That possibility occurred to me later.”
Dominic studied her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because my mother begged me not to.”
There it was.
Not greed.
Not only fear of scandal.
Family loyalty.
Misplaced and destructive, but real.
“She said Victor spent the last ten years of his life terrified that the Moretti family would discover what he’d done.”
“What had he done?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“So you decided to protect her.”
“Yes.”
“By framing Walter?”
Cassandra flinched.
“I did not intend to frame him.”
“You accused him of theft in front of eighty people.”
“I wanted him gone before he gave you the photograph.”
“You packed his suitcase.”
“Yes.”
“You grabbed his wrist.”
She looked at Walter.
Shame flickered.
“Yes.”
“And you hit Emily.”
Cassandra swallowed.
“Yes.”
Dominic’s expression remained controlled.
“You call that protection?”
“No.”
That surprised him.
Cassandra’s voice lowered.
“I call it panic.”
Emily looked at her bruised cheek in the reflection of the study window.
Cassandra met her eyes.
“I should not have touched you.”
Emily did not answer.
An apology was not repair.
Not yet.
Dominic turned back to Walter.
“Lucia disappears in 1982. Daniel discovers Moretti money moving through a hospital project in 1987. How are those connected?”
Walter stared at the mitten.
Then something shifted in his expression.
Memory.
“Daniel asked about Lucia.”
“When?”
“Two days before he died.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“What did he ask?”
“He wanted to know if Anthony still had something from the kidnapping.”
“What?”
“A train station locker ticket.”
Cassandra stared.
“Milwaukee?”
Walter slowly nodded.
Dominic picked up the old ticket they had found beneath the globe.
Chicago to Milwaukee.
Anthony Moretti.
Victor Vale.
Perhaps it was not merely a record of their trip after Dominic’s birth.
Emily turned it over.
“There’s writing under the names.”
Everyone moved closer.
Faded pencil marks ran beneath the ink.
Walter had overlooked them.
So had Dominic.
Emily angled the paper toward the desk lamp.
BAGGAGE 227
Rose whispered, “Union Station?”
“No,” Walter said.
“The old Milwaukee Intermodal depot used numbered baggage lockers back then.”
Dominic looked at him.
“Why would Daniel ask about a locker tied to Lucia?”
Walter shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Cassandra suddenly crossed to Anthony’s desk.
“What are you doing?”
“My father kept travel receipts.”
Dominic watched her pull open a lower drawer.
She did not search randomly.
She knew exactly where to look.
That registered.
Again.
“Cassandra.”
She froze.
“How do you know that drawer?”
No answer.
Dominic walked closer.
“You’ve searched it before.”
“Yes.”
“What did you take?”
“Nothing.”
He stared at her.
Then Emily noticed the empty rectangular space in the dust near the back.
Something had been removed recently.
She pointed.
“There was something here.”
Cassandra’s face changed.
Dominic saw it.
“What was it?”
“A photograph.”
“Of what?”
Cassandra looked toward the red mitten.
“Of a little girl.”
Walter rose.
“You found a photograph of Lucia?”
“I didn’t know who she was.”
“Where is it?”
Cassandra swallowed.
“My mother has it.”
Dominic’s voice went soft.
“Why?”
“Because when I showed it to her…”
Cassandra’s eyes filled.
“…she started crying.”
Nobody moved.
“What did she say?” Dominic asked.
Cassandra looked at him.
“She said, ‘Victor told me they never found her.’”
Dominic waited.
Cassandra continued.
“Then she turned the photograph over.”
“What was on the back?”
“A date.”
“What date?”
“October 18, 1987.”
The day Anthony and Victor traveled to Milwaukee.
Walter whispered, “That can’t be Lucia. She would have been eight.”
Cassandra nodded slowly.
“She was.”
Dominic’s skin prickled.
“What else?”
“Two words.”
Cassandra looked at the mitten in his hand.
“Found her.”
The room went silent.
For five years, Anthony Moretti had failed to locate his missing daughter.
Then, on the morning after Dominic was born, Anthony traveled to Milwaukee with Victor Vale.
And according to the photograph Cassandra had taken—
they found Lucia.
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“Where is the picture now?”
Cassandra answered.
“In my mother’s house.”
Dominic reached for his coat.
Walter stood.
“Dominic.”
He turned.
The old man looked terrified again.
“If Victor knew where Lucia was and never told Anthony…”
Dominic understood.
The ticket might not prove Anthony found his daughter.
It might prove Victor did.
Cassandra looked between them.
“My father traveled with Anthony.”
“Yes,” Walter said.
“But there’s something you don’t know.”
“What?”
Walter pointed toward the handwriting on the ticket.
“Those two names aren’t written by the same person.”
Dominic examined them.
Anthony Moretti was written in heavy black ink.
Victor Vale in blue.
Walter’s expression darkened.
“Anthony didn’t go to Milwaukee with Victor.”
May you like
A pause.
“He went looking for him.”
