Chapter 6 - WHAT SOFIA KNEW
“No.”
Walter said it three times.
The child’s drawing remained on the table.
“No. Sofia never knew.”
Dominic looked at him.
“You’ve said that about several things tonight.”
Walter’s face folded with pain.
“I drove her everywhere for twenty years.”
“Then maybe she learned how to go somewhere without you.”
Emily studied the green figure.
A woman.
Dark hair.
A long coat.
It proved nothing by itself.
But beside the figure, Lucia had drawn a small circle hanging from the woman’s hand.
A rosary.
Dominic recognized it.
Sofia Moretti had carried a black onyx rosary every day of her adult life.
It now rested in a velvet box in Dominic’s bedroom.
He had placed it there after her funeral.
“I need the rosary,” he said.
Walter looked confused.
“Why?”
Dominic did not answer.
They returned to Lake Forest before dawn.
The estate felt hollow after the guests had gone.
Discarded champagne glasses still stood on trays.
Flowers meant to celebrate the engagement leaned beneath their own weight.
Emily started instinctively collecting glasses.
Dominic stopped her.
“Not tonight.”
She looked at him.
“It’s my job.”
“No.”
His voice softened.
“Tonight you’re part of this.”
Emily did not know what to say.
Cassandra did.
“She shouldn’t be.”
Dominic turned.
Cassandra immediately corrected herself.
“I don’t mean because she’s staff.”
Emily looked surprised.
Cassandra swallowed.
“I mean because every new thing she learns puts her deeper inside a family problem that has already hurt Walter.”
Dominic studied her.
It was the first protective thing Cassandra had said all night that did not sound like control.
Emily answered for herself.
“I’m already inside it.”
Cassandra looked at her cheek.
The faint handprint had faded.
The memory had not.
“I know.”
Dominic went upstairs.
When he returned, he carried Sofia’s rosary.
Walter’s eyes filled immediately.
Dominic placed it beside the child’s drawing.
Emily leaned closer.
One bead near the crucifix was not black.
It was dark red.
A replacement.
Dominic remembered playing with that bead during Mass when he was small.
“What happened to the original?”
Walter looked at him.
“You broke it when you were four.”
“No.”
Dominic’s answer came instantly.
Walter frowned.
“How do you know?”
“My mother told me the bead broke before I was born.”
Walter’s face changed.
Another false memory.
Or another lie inherited so often it had become truth.
Dominic turned the rosary over.
Tiny scratches marked the silver crucifix.
Not random.
Numbers.
10-19-87.
Cassandra whispered, “The date on the drawing.”
Emily looked at Dominic.
“Sofia engraved it.”
Walter covered his eyes.
“She knew.”
Dominic sat across from him.
“How?”
“I swear to you, I did not take her to Milwaukee.”
Rose, who had rested upstairs for an hour, entered the room.
“I may know who did.”
Everyone turned.
“Sofia came to the hospital three weeks after Dominic was born.”
Walter stared at her.
“You never told me.”
“She asked me not to.”
Rose gave him a pointed look.
“Apparently all of us were excellent at keeping the wrong promises.”
Dominic almost smiled.
Almost.
“What did she want?”
“To know what happened to Elena Caruso.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew you weren’t the child she had delivered.”
The sentence still hurt.
Less sharply now.
But deeper.
“How long had she known?”
“From the beginning.”
Dominic looked at Walter.
He nodded.
“She chose you, Dominic.”
Rose continued.
“Sofia had lost a son. Elena had lost a husband. Elena believed whoever killed Daniel would eventually find the baby.”
“So she gave me away.”
Rose’s voice was gentle.
“She asked Sofia to take you.”
That distinction mattered.
Dominic looked down.
Emily watched his hands.
For the first time all night, they were not clenched.
“My mother chose me.”
“Yes.”
Walter leaned forward.
“She loved you before Anthony even agreed.”
A memory rose unexpectedly.
Sofia kneeling to button Dominic’s winter coat when he was six.
Saying, You never have to earn your place in this house.
He had assumed every mother said things like that.
Now he understood why she had.
Dominic looked at the rosary.
“And Lucia?”
Rose continued.
“I told Sofia that Victor had taken Elena to Milwaukee. I didn’t know about Lucia.”
“But Sofia found out.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Cassandra answered quietly.
“My father.”
Everyone looked at her.
She was holding the cedar box she had taken from her mother’s house.
“I found something in the lining.”
She had spent the drive back examining it.
A seam had come loose.
Inside was a small paper sleeve.
Not legal documents.
A photograph negative.
And a receipt.
October 19, 1987.
Milwaukee Central Station.
One passenger.
Name:
S. Moretti.
Walter whispered, “Sofia.”
Cassandra nodded.
“My father bought the ticket.”
Dominic looked at her.
“So Victor told her.”
“Apparently.”
Evelyn’s earlier story had been incomplete.
Again.
Not necessarily a lie.
Perhaps Victor had hidden even more from his wife.
Rose frowned.
“Why would Victor tell Sofia but not Anthony?”
Walter answered.
“Because Anthony would have gone after Salvatore with an army.”
“And Sofia?”
Walter looked at the rosary.
“She would go alone.”
That sounded exactly like Dominic’s mother.
Quiet.
Stubborn.
Terrifying when necessary.
Emily pointed at the date.
“Sofia arrived the morning Lucia drew the picture.”
Dominic nodded.
“Then Salvatore came.”
“With Victor,” Cassandra added.
Walter looked at her.
“Maybe Victor wasn’t with Salvatore.”
Everyone paused.
“What do you mean?” Dominic asked.
Walter tapped the drawing.
“Children draw what they see. Not what we assume.”
He pointed to Uncle Vic.
Then to Salvatore.
The men stood far apart.
Salvatore was beside the black car.
Victor stood near the porch.
Between them, Lucia had drawn jagged red lines.
Emily stared.
“They were arguing.”
Cassandra’s eyes filled.
“My father was trying to stop him.”
Maybe.
A new interpretation.
A reversal.
Victor had betrayed Daniel by giving away his address.
But perhaps, after realizing what he had done, he spent the rest of that week trying to undo it.
Dominic asked Rose, “What happened to Elena?”
“She disappeared from Milwaukee three days later.”
“Voluntarily?”
“I believe so.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Walter frowned.
“Anthony received a postcard every year.”
Dominic looked at him.
“What postcard?”
“On your birthday.”
“From who?”
“No name.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Different places.”
Dominic remembered them.
His father had received postcards he never displayed.
Montana.
Arizona.
Maine.
Anthony always burned them in the fireplace after reading them.
Dominic had assumed they were business messages.
“What did they say?”
Walter looked ashamed.
“I read one.”
Dominic waited.
“Only four words.”
Walter’s voice cracked.
He is still safe.
Elena.
Dominic closed his eyes.
His biological mother had checked on him.
Every year.
From a distance.
“Why did they stop?”
“When you turned eighteen.”
Emily asked quietly, “Did Anthony keep any?”
“No.”
Dominic opened his eyes.
“My father kept everything.”
Walter frowned.
“He burned them.”
“He burned the cards.”
Dominic looked toward Anthony’s old desk.
“But he kept stamps.”
Anthony collected them.
Hundreds.
Arranged by year.
A habit Dominic had always thought strangely sentimental.
They went to the study.
Emily located the 1987–2005 album.
Most pages were full.
One page near the back contained eighteen stamps mounted in a neat vertical row.
Different states.
Different years.
Every one postmarked October.
Dominic carefully lifted the plastic sheet.
Beneath each stamp, Anthony had written a town.
The final stamp, from 2005, came from Vermont.
Below it Anthony had written something else.
Not a town.
A name.
Lucia.
Walter gripped the edge of the desk.
Dominic stared.
The last postcard had not come from Elena.
It had come from his missing sister.
Beneath the name was a second notation.
She knows about him.
Emily whispered, “About you.”
Dominic felt the room tilt.
Lucia was alive in 2005.
She knew about Dominic.
Then Cassandra noticed a small envelope tucked into the album spine.
Inside was no letter.
Only a bus ticket.
Burlington, Vermont to Chicago.
Dated December 12, 2005.
Walter stared at the arrival time.
“I remember that day.”
“What happened?”
“Anthony canceled every meeting.”
Dominic remembered too.
His father had left dinner early.
He had come home after midnight carrying Sofia’s rosary.
Sofia had already been dead six years.
Dominic picked up the bus ticket.
“Did Lucia come here?”
Walter’s face emptied.
“I don’t know.”
Dominic looked at the old security log stored beside the albums.
One handwritten visitor entry appeared for December 12.
No surname.
Only:
L. — Private.
And beneath it, in Anthony’s handwriting:
Do not tell Dominic yet.
Cassandra whispered, “He met her.”
Dominic stared at the words.
His father had found Lucia.
His sister had come to the estate.
And Anthony had still chosen not to tell him.
Emily reached for the visitor log.
A folded piece of paper slipped from between its pages.
Not a letter.
A restaurant receipt.
Two meals.
One coffee.
One glass of red wine.
Anthony had written something on the back.
She refused the money. She wants only one thing.
Dominic turned it over.
May you like
Below that:
The truth about Daniel.
