Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO ORDERED THE EMPTY FUNERAL
“Mommy said I had to disappear because someone would hurt you.”
Anna watched Lorenzo reread the note.
Her voice trembled, but she kept her eyes on him.
“I remember writing it. I just don't remember everything that happened afterward.”
Lorenzo sat completely still.
For eleven years, he'd blamed himself for failing to protect his sister.
Now a piece of paper suggested that the person who had orchestrated her disappearance was their own mother.
“Why would she do that?” he asked.
Anna shook her head.
“I hoped you could tell me.”
Emma moved closer.
“May I see the paper?”
Anna nodded.
The writing looked like a child's.
Some letters were backward.
At the bottom, a tiny lighthouse had been drawn in blue pencil.
Lorenzo recognized that lighthouse.
Sophie had drawn it on everything—birthday cards, homework, even the inside of his shoes.
“This is hers,” he said.
Anna studied his reaction.
“You believe me?”
“I believe you remember more than anyone told you.”
She looked down at her bracelet.
“That's not the same thing.”
“No,” Lorenzo admitted. “It isn't.”
The distinction mattered.
He had spent years accepting convenient explanations from people he trusted.
He wasn't going to make the same mistake with his sister.
Maria entered the courtyard carrying a light blanket.
“Anna, would you like a break?”
Anna shook her head.
“I want to stay.”
Maria gently placed the blanket beside her.
“All right. You decide.”
Emma noticed how Anna relaxed.
For perhaps the first time in years, the young woman was hearing adults acknowledge her right to make decisions.
Lorenzo turned toward Emma.
“Can you ask Daniel to bring Margaret here?”
Before Emma could respond, Anna stiffened.
“Please don't make Margaret leave.”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“Why would I?”
“Salvatore says if I tell strangers things about my childhood, Margaret won't be allowed to visit me anymore.”
Lorenzo's jaw tightened.
“He said that?”
Anna nodded.
“Last month.”
The timing was important.
Last month, Victoria had visited Emma’s mother.
Last month, the photograph had been taken.
Someone had begun moving pieces around Sophie's life before the banquet.
Emma sat beside Anna.
“Margaret has been looking after you?”
“Yes. She taught me to read properly after I missed so much school. She brings lemon cookies on Sundays.”
“Does she live here?”
“No. She has an apartment nearby.”
“Do you trust her?”
Anna nodded immediately.
“She's never lied to me about loving me.”
Emma heard the careful wording.
“Has she lied about other things?”
Anna stared at the courtyard stones.
“She says sometimes people do the wrong thing because they're afraid.”
An hour later, Margaret Wells arrived at the consultation room.
She was seventy-four, with thin silver hair and a navy cardigan.
The same rosary from the photograph was wrapped around her fingers.
When she saw Lorenzo, she stopped.
“Oh, my goodness.”
Lorenzo stood.
“You knew my mother.”
Margaret nodded.
“I did.”
“Did she ask you to keep Sophie?”
Margaret looked toward Anna.
“Not at first.”
“Then who did?”
“Your uncle.”
Lorenzo drew a sharp breath.
“But your mother knew where Sophie was. She visited twice.”
Anna stared at Margaret.
“You told me she never came.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“I told you she couldn't come anymore.”
“You told me I was remembering dreams.”
The elderly woman's face crumpled.
“Anna, sweetheart—”
“Please answer.”
Margaret sat slowly.
“Yes. Your mother visited. She came the first time three weeks after you arrived and again before Christmas.”
Anna gripped the edge of the table.
“What did she say?”
“She held you until you fell asleep. Then she asked me to promise you'd never be returned to the estate.”
Lorenzo felt something inside him fracture.
“And you obeyed?”
Margaret met his gaze.
“I believed your mother when she said you were in danger.”
“From whom?”
Margaret looked down at her rosary.
“I was never told the whole truth.”
Emma wanted to believe her.
But the photograph beneath Victoria’s plate suggested Margaret was still deeply involved in the secret.
“Why were you with Victoria last Thursday?” Emma asked.
Margaret's hands stopped moving.
“Because Victoria said she could help Anna leave St. Catherine's.”
“Help her leave?” Lorenzo repeated.
“She said Anna didn't need residential care anymore. She offered to arrange an independent apartment, schooling, and a job.”
Anna looked up hopefully.
“She told me I could have a little painting studio.”
Emma remembered Victoria's expensive dresses, her polished smile, and the way she had ordered Emma onto her injured knee.
Generosity had never seemed to come naturally to that woman.
“What did Victoria want in exchange?” Emma asked.
Margaret hesitated.
“She wanted me to sign a statement saying Anna had no surviving relatives.”
Lorenzo's expression hardened.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wouldn't erase her family again.”
Anna reached for Margaret’s hand.
For the first time, the elderly woman allowed herself to cry openly.
“I should have told you,” she whispered. “I thought I was protecting you.”
Anna pulled her hand away.
“I wanted to know who I was.”
Margaret nodded.
“You deserved that.”
The admission was simple.
It didn't repair eleven years.
But Emma could see how much it cost the older woman to say it.
Outside the room, Daniel was reviewing records from the Moretti estate.
He returned carrying a thin folder.
“Lorenzo, there's something unusual about your mother's last months.”
“What?”
“Her medical records show she was treated for a serious heart condition. But the family calendar records several trips away from home that nobody could explain.”
Margaret looked up.
“Those were the visits to Sophie.”
“Possibly,” Daniel said. “But there's more.”
He placed a photocopy on the table.
It was a receipt from a jewelry shop in Newport.
Dated December 22, eleven years earlier.
A silver bracelet had been repaired.
The engraving inside the clasp read:
S.M. — ALWAYS YOUR REN.
Lorenzo stared at it.
“I gave Sophie that bracelet in September.”
Margaret nodded.
“The clasp broke. Your mother had it repaired before Christmas.”
Anna touched the bracelet.
“I thought Margaret bought it for me.”
“No, sweetheart,” Margaret whispered. “It was always yours.”
Lorenzo studied the receipt.
The purchaser's signature was partially faded.
But he recognized his mother's handwriting.
There was no longer any reasonable doubt that she had known where Sophie was.
The harder question was why.
Emma noticed another line near the bottom.
“What's this?”
An additional service had been charged.
Replacement compartment spring.
Daniel frowned.
“A compartment?”
Anna unclasped the bracelet.
“There's a place here that sticks sometimes.”
She handed it to Lorenzo.
He inspected the small silver lighthouse charm hanging beside the clasp.
It looked solid.
But beneath the lighthouse was a tiny seam.
Emma found a sewing pin in the emergency repair kit she kept in her apron.
“May I?”
Lorenzo nodded.
She pressed the pin gently against the seam.
A miniature panel opened.
Inside was a tightly rolled strip of yellowed paper.
Lorenzo carefully removed it.
Three words were written in his mother's handwriting.
ASK ABOUT ELIZABETH.
Below them was a date.
JUNE 3, 2015.
Margaret's face drained of color.
Anna looked between the adults.
“Who's Elizabeth?”
Nobody answered.
Emma turned toward Margaret.
“You know.”
The elderly woman gripped her rosary.
“Elizabeth wasn't a stranger,” she said.
Lorenzo leaned closer.
“Who was she?”
Margaret looked directly at him.
“Elizabeth Sinclair was your mother's closest friend.”
Emma frowned.
“Sinclair?”
Margaret nodded.
“And she had a daughter.”
Lorenzo looked toward the empty doorway.
“Victoria?”
“Yes.”
Margaret's voice dropped.
“But when I knew that little girl, her name wasn't Victoria.”
Emma suddenly remembered her mother’s warning about a different name.
Rebecca.
Margaret continued.
“Rebecca Sinclair disappeared from Newport the same week your mother died.”
Lorenzo sat back.
His fiancée had claimed to grow up in California.
She had told him her parents died when she was young.
Every photograph she'd shown him had been from adulthood.
Margaret covered her mouth.
“There's something else. Elizabeth Sinclair came to see your mother on the day Sophie disappeared.”
Lorenzo felt cold.
“What did she want?”
Margaret hesitated.
“She brought a small wooden box. Your mother refused to take it.”
“What was inside?”
May you like
Margaret looked toward the silver bracelet.
“Something that proved who Rebecca's father really was.”
