Chapter 4 - THE MAID'S NAME ON THE RECORDING
I stared at the recorder.
My name.
On a device connected to a woman who had disappeared eleven years ago.
Roman looked at Michael.
“Play it.”
Michael hesitated.
“Sir, I think Miss Dawson should decide.”
Everyone turned toward me.
I wanted to refuse.
My mother's prescriptions were still scattered inside my handbag.
My brother was recovering from surgery.
I had already lost my dignity once that evening.
Now somebody had placed my name inside a mystery involving the Bellandi family.
But I couldn't walk away.
“Play it,” I said.
A faint mechanical hum filled the room.
Then an older woman's voice spoke.
“Emma Dawson. Twenty-six years old. Daughter of Margaret Dawson.”
My knees weakened.
Margaret was my mother's name.
The voice continued.
“If Emma is working at the Bellandi house, please tell her that her mother did what I couldn't.”
There was a pause.
Then:
“Margaret saved my son.”
The recording ended.
Roman turned slowly toward me.
“Emma, how long has your mother known my family?”
“She doesn't.”
“Are you certain?”
“My mother worked as a hospital cleaner. She's been sick for years. She barely leaves our apartment.”
Teresa gripped the edge of the dresser.
“Margaret Dawson,” she repeated.
Then she looked at me.
“Did your mother ever work at Saint Catherine's Medical Center?”
I nodded.
“For almost twenty years.”
Teresa closed her eyes.
“That's where Elizabeth was taken after the crash.”
Roman stepped back.
For years, his mother's fate had been a question nobody could answer.
Now the maid standing in his dressing room appeared to be connected to her disappearance.
He looked at me differently.
Not with suspicion.
With something worse.
Desperate hope.
“Emma, would your mother speak to us?”
I thought about her frail hands, the medication bottles lined up beside her bed.
“She doesn't do well with stress.”
“I understand.”
“No,” I said.
Roman stopped.
“You don't. Vanessa nearly cost me my job tonight. My brother's hospital bills are overdue. My mother hasn't been told any of this, and now you're asking me to bring her into the same thing that frightened your aunt for eleven years.”
Roman listened without interrupting.
Then he nodded.
“You're right.”
He turned to Michael.
“Arrange transportation for Emma whenever she wants it. And make sure her family isn't exposed to anyone connected with Hartwell.”
Vanessa looked up.
“You think my father would hurt her?”
Roman faced her.
“I think your father has spent eleven years making people afraid to speak.”
Vanessa went quiet.
Teresa reached toward me.
“Emma, there is something you should know.”
She explained that Saint Catherine's had been the first hospital to receive Elizabeth after the accident.
According to the official report, Roman's mother died during an emergency transfer.
But Teresa had discovered later that her name remained on hospital staffing records for another six weeks.
“Someone kept paying for her care,” Teresa said.
Roman frowned.
“Who?”
“We couldn't trace the account.”
I thought about the recording.
Margaret saved my son.
“Why would your mother say my mother saved you?” I asked Roman.
He shook his head.
“I have no idea.”
Vanessa suddenly spoke.
“Eleanor told me there was a child brought to the hospital that night.”
Teresa stared.
“What child?”
“She didn't say.”
Roman's expression darkened.
“I was twenty-nine when my parents died. I wasn't a child.”
Vanessa looked confused.
“Then I don't know what she meant.”
Michael reviewed the recording's metadata.
“The file was transferred onto this device six months ago. The original recording is older.”
“Can you find the source?” Roman asked.
“Possibly. There's an identifying number embedded in the file.”
Vanessa whispered, “Eleanor always labeled her recordings.”
Roman glanced at her.
“You knew that?”
“She kept a notebook. Every recording had a number.”
“Where is the notebook?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“I never saw it again.”
Teresa suddenly reached for the hospital bracelet.
She turned it over.
Inside the plastic clasp was a small strip of faded paper.
A number.
417\.
Michael checked the recorder.
His expression changed.
“The second file is labeled 417.”
Roman examined the bracelet.
Then Michael opened the file information.
“There are twelve recordings in the original sequence.”
“Where are the others?”
“I don't know.”
But I was no longer listening.
The number 417 meant something to me.
When I was little, my mother kept a small notebook locked in her bedside drawer.
She used to say it contained things from her nursing years, though she had never been a nurse.
On the front cover, written in blue ink, were three numbers.
417\.
I looked at Roman.
“My mother has a notebook with that number.”
Teresa whispered, “Dear God.”
Roman asked the question I was afraid to answer.
“Emma, is it still in your house?”
I nodded.
Then I remembered something else.
That afternoon, before leaving for work, my mother had given me a sealed envelope.
She'd told me not to open it unless I lost my job.
It was still inside the lining of my handbag.
I pulled it out.
May you like
Across the front, in my mother's handwriting, were six words.
FOR ROMAN BELLANDI, IF EMMA IS ACCUSED.
