Chapter 4 - THE BLUE COAT
Roman did not ask why Lucia was crying.
That somehow made it worse.
He simply stood there, staring at the empty place where his father’s blue coat had been stored, as if the missing garment had reached across thirty years and struck him.
Finally, he said, “What letters?”
Lucia wiped her face.
“I only saw one.”
“When?”
“The night I disappeared.”
Roman turned toward her so sharply that Cassandra stepped closer to Anna.
Lucia continued.
“Dad gave it to me shortly before he died.”
“Our father had letters from Mom for twenty years and never told me?”
“He said she asked him not to.”
Roman laughed once.
There was nothing amused in it.
“Of course.”
Evelyn lowered herself into a chair.
“Your mother wrote letters during her final illness.”
Roman looked at her.
“You knew?”
“I knew she wrote them. I didn’t know Anthony kept them.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“For whom?”
Evelyn looked at Roman.
“For you. Lucia. Your father.”
She hesitated.
“And one other person.”
Roman caught it.
“Who?”
“I never knew.”
That became the next mystery.
Lucia sat across from him.
“The letter Dad gave me wasn’t mine.”
Roman frowned.
“Then whose?”
“It had Vincent’s name on the envelope.”
Everyone went still.
Roman’s voice lowered.
“You opened Uncle Vincent’s letter?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
Lucia looked down at Anna’s bracelet.
“That your mother knew Vincent had been moving money out of a family medical trust.”
Roman didn’t react.
Not visibly.
But Daniel Crowe swore under his breath.
Cassandra stared at Lucia.
“You never told me that.”
“I told you there were financial records.”
“You didn’t tell me Roman’s mother knew.”
“Because every person who knew too much seemed to disappear.”
Roman flinched.
Lucia saw it.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
His voice was flat.
“Don’t apologize. Finish.”
Their mother had apparently discovered irregular payments months before her death.
She believed Vincent was taking money intended for widows, employees and medical care.
But the letter contained something stranger.
Vincent hadn’t begun the scheme.
Someone older had.
Someone their mother referred to only as R.
Roman frowned.
“R?”
Lucia nodded.
“The letter said, ‘Vincent is frightened of R. That makes him dangerous, not powerful.’”
Daniel leaned forward.
“Could R have been your father?”
“Anthony doesn’t start with R,” Cassandra said.
Daniel gave her a look.
“I’m aware.”
For the first time, Evelyn spoke.
“Rafael.”
Roman turned toward her.
“My grandfather?”
Evelyn nodded slowly.
Rafael DeLuca.
The man whose crest was engraved on Anna’s bracelet.
The family patriarch whose portrait hung over the main staircase.
He had been dead for twenty-four years.
Roman stared toward the hall.
“So the crest isn’t simply decoration.”
Lucia shook her head.
“Dad told me Grandfather used that crest on private family accounts.”
Daniel picked up the bracelet carefully.
“Then Anna’s bracelet may have been created to identify her as a beneficiary.”
Cassandra looked at him.
“Why would a newborn need that?”
Nobody answered.
Roman did.
“Because somebody wanted proof she existed.”
Lucia’s face tightened.
Anna was sitting in the breakfast room drawing another picture while Claire—me—pretended not to listen from the doorway.
The sight of her made the conversation uglier.
A seven-year-old child should have been thinking about Christmas.
Not whether her existence altered family finances.
Roman looked at Lucia.
“Who made the bracelet?”
“Dad’s old jeweler.”
“Our father died before Anna was born.”
“Yes.”
Roman froze.
Lucia reached across the table and touched the bracelet.
“The order was placed before he died.”
Roman stared at her.
“How?”
“I was pregnant.”
Silence.
Roman’s face broke.
Not dramatically.
His eyes simply closed.
“You were pregnant when you disappeared.”
Lucia nodded.
He turned away.
Eleven years of grief seemed to rearrange itself inside him.
“You let me believe you died with my niece inside you.”
“I believed staying alive required it.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“I didn’t know who around you I could trust.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
Her voice softened.
“But it was enough.”
Roman walked to the window.
Outside, snow covered the driveway where Vincent’s car tracks disappeared into darkness.
Cassandra followed him only halfway.
“I found Lucia three years ago by accident.”
Roman didn’t turn.
“How?”
“My mother.”
That surprised everyone.
Cassandra’s mother, Margaret Whitmore, had died four years earlier.
Cassandra continued.
“She left a locked box among her personal effects. There was a train ticket inside.”
Lucia looked confused.
Cassandra removed an old paper ticket from her purse.
Philadelphia to Harrisburg.
One-way.
Eleven years old.
On the back, Margaret had written:
L. IS SAFE. DO NOT SEARCH UNTIL VINCENT IS GONE.
Roman read it twice.
Then looked at Cassandra.
“You spent a year searching.”
“Yes.”
“And found her.”
“Yes.”
“Then kept her from me.”
Cassandra’s eyes filled, but she didn’t defend herself.
“I made the wrong choice.”
Lucia shook her head.
“No. You made the choice I demanded.”
“You were frightened.”
“I was an adult.”
Roman turned.
“And what about Evelyn?”
Cassandra flinched.
There it was.
The part she could not hide behind Lucia to justify.
“I panicked.”
“You fired a seventy-year-old woman from her home.”
“I know.”
“You used my name.”
“I know.”
“You made her believe I wanted her gone.”
Cassandra swallowed.
“I know.”
Evelyn’s voice surprised us.
“Why?”
Cassandra looked at her.
“Because when you saw Anna at St. Matthew’s, you looked at her face and immediately saw Roman’s mother.”
Evelyn said nothing.
“I was afraid you would tell Roman before Lucia was ready.”
“So you punished me.”
“Yes.”
The word landed heavily.
No excuse.
No denial.
Cassandra crossed the room and knelt beside Evelyn.
“I thought I was protecting a child. I convinced myself that made everything else acceptable.”
Tears slid down her face.
“It didn’t.”
Evelyn looked at her for a long time.
“You could have trusted me.”
“I should have.”
“You called me useless.”
Cassandra closed her eyes.
“I was cruel because cruelty was faster than telling the truth.”
Evelyn’s voice remained quiet.
“That explains it.”
Cassandra looked up hopefully.
Evelyn finished.
“It does not forgive it.”
Roman watched the exchange.
Then a guard entered carrying a blue piece of fabric.
Everyone stood.
“We found this in the service incinerator.”
Evelyn gasped.
A torn section of wool.
Blue.
Roman’s father’s coat.
Burned along one edge.
Roman took it.
Something crackled inside the lining.
He tore open the seam.
A folded envelope dropped onto the table.
Roman’s name was written across it.
Not Vincent’s.
Not Lucia’s.
ROMAN ANTHONY — WHEN YOU ARE READY TO KNOW WHY I LEFT.
Roman went absolutely still.
Evelyn whispered, “That’s your mother’s handwriting.”
Roman stared at the envelope.
Then turned it over.
The seal had already been broken.
Someone had read it before him.
And on the back was one fresh fingerprint made in dark fireplace ash.
Daniel looked toward the hallway.
Cassandra whispered what all of us were thinking.
“Vincent read it.”
Roman shook his head.
“No.”
He pointed to the ash.
“The incinerator uses gas.”
Daniel understood first.
“That isn’t incinerator ash.”
Roman’s gaze moved toward the only room in the mansion where a wood fire had burned that evening.
The private study.
His study.
Roman’s face hardened.
“Someone read my mother’s letter inside this house tonight.”
He looked at the remaining security officers.
“Lock the estate.”
Then Anna’s small voice came from the breakfast-room doorway.
“Uncle Roman?”
Every adult turned.
She held up her newest drawing.
A man beside a fireplace.
A square watch on his wrist.
And beside him was another figure.
A woman in a cream dress.
Anna pointed at the woman.
“That’s the lady who told the watch man where Mommy was.”
Nobody moved.
Cassandra stared at the picture.
Because the woman Anna had drawn wasn’t her.
It was Cassandra’s mother.
Margaret Whitmore.
May you like
The woman who had supposedly saved Lucia.
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