Chapter 2 - THE BOY IN ANTHONY’S COFFIN
Roman crossed the room before anyone could stop him.
He hit the television controls.
Nothing.
He checked the cable.
The machine had not malfunctioned.
The recording ended there.
Deliberately.
Roman turned toward Eleanor.
“Finish the sentence.”
Eleanor stood beside Sophie without moving.
Lena looked as if standing upright required every ounce of strength she had.
“Roman,” Eleanor said quietly, “this is not how you should learn.”
He laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“My wife has been missing for three years. My daughter thought I was a stranger. I found my own childhood being photographed by people I never knew existed, and the man I buried when I was sixteen apparently made videos afterward.”
He held up the birth certificate.
“Tell me how I should learn.”
Sophie flinched.
Roman saw it immediately.
His anger vanished from his voice.
He crouched several feet away from her.
“Hey.”
Sophie pressed herself against Lena’s leg.
Roman did not move closer.
“You’re not in trouble, sweetheart.”
Sophie looked at him.
“Grandma too?”
Roman glanced at Eleanor.
That question hurt more than anything else.
“No yelling at Sophie,” he said.
The little girl considered this.
Then she nodded.
Roman stood.
“Caleb, take Sophie upstairs.”
“No.”
The word came from Lena.
Roman froze.
It was the first thing his wife had said directly to him.
Her fingers tightened around Sophie’s shoulder.
“Not away from me.”
Roman stared at her.
Three years ago, Lena used to fall asleep with one bare foot tucked beneath his leg.
She stole his coffee.
She hated lilies.
She laughed when she was nervous.
The woman before him looked like Lena after someone had slowly erased every easy thing from her face.
Roman took one step backward.
“All right.”
Lena’s eyes filled.
It was not forgiveness.
It was relief.
Roman looked at Caleb.
“Stay where she can see you.”
Caleb nodded.
Eleanor finally spoke.
“The body in Anthony’s coffin was not Anthony.”
Roman turned.
“Whose was it?”
Eleanor’s jaw tightened.
“A boy named Gabriel Vale.”
Lena closed her eyes.
Tessa whispered, “A boy?”
“He was seventeen,” Eleanor said.
Roman went still.
He had been sixteen when Anthony supposedly died.
He remembered the funeral.
The closed coffin.
The smell of incense.
His mother gripping his shoulder so tightly her nails hurt.
He remembered wanting to see his father’s face one last time.
Eleanor had refused.
“The accident made identification difficult,” she had said.
Roman stared at her now.
“You buried a seventeen-year-old kid under my father’s name.”
“I buried what Anthony told me to bury.”
“That makes it better?”
“No.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“It makes it true.”
Roman walked toward her.
“Who was Gabriel Vale?”
She didn’t answer.
Roman lifted the birth certificate.
The paper trembled once in his hand.
“Because the name on this is Michael Vale.”
Silence.
Tessa looked from Roman to Eleanor.
Lena began crying without making a sound.
Roman saw it.
He saw everything.
“Gabriel was related to me.”
Eleanor’s face gave him the answer.
“How?”
“Your brother.”
The word hit the room like broken glass.
Roman stared at her.
“No.”
“Half brother.”
“My father’s son?”
“No.”
That stopped him.
Eleanor’s voice softened.
“Your mother’s.”
Roman looked down at the birth certificate.
Mother:
MARIANNE VALE.
Name:
MICHAEL ANTHONY VALE.
Born:
November 19, 1987.
Roman had spent forty-two years believing Eleanor gave birth to him.
He looked at the woman who had kissed his scraped knees, attended every school event, taught him never to wear brown shoes with a black suit, and once stayed awake for thirty-six hours beside his hospital bed after he was shot.
“You’re not my mother.”
Sophie whispered, “Daddy?”
Roman looked away before the child could see what had broken across his face.
Eleanor’s eyes glistened.
“I am the woman who raised you.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
The answer barely came out.
“I did not give birth to you.”
Roman pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek.
It was an old habit.
One Anthony had hated.
“Why?”
Eleanor looked at the 1988 photograph.
“The baby in that picture was Roman D’Angelo.”
“Your son.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“He died when he was three days old.”
Roman looked at the handwritten words again.
ROMAN — DAY 3.
Something inside him turned cold.
“You replaced him.”
Eleanor opened her eyes.
“No.”
“You took somebody else’s baby and gave him your dead son’s name.”
“Anthony brought you home.”
That was the reversal Roman had not expected.
He stared at her.
“What?”
“I had lost my child. I could barely get out of bed. Anthony disappeared for almost two weeks. Then he came home carrying you.”
“Where was Marianne?”
Eleanor’s expression changed.
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I asked every day for months.”
“And Anthony?”
“He said your mother had abandoned you.”
Roman looked at Lena.
Her face told him there was more.
“What?”
Lena swallowed.
“Marianne didn’t abandon you.”
Roman’s heart began pounding.
“You knew her?”
“No.”
Lena shook her head.
“But I found letters.”
“Where?”
“In Anthony’s things.”
Eleanor stepped forward.
“Lena—”
Roman looked at her.
“Don’t.”
Eleanor stopped.
Lena carefully reached beneath the collar of her hospital gown.
A thin chain appeared.
On it hung a small silver Saint Christopher medal.
Roman knew it.
He had seen the same medal once before.
Around Gabriel Vale’s neck in a photograph hidden inside Anthony’s mausoleum compartment.
Lena removed it and held it toward him.
“Marianne gave one to each of her sons.”
Roman took it.
The back was engraved.
M.V. TO M.A.V.
COME HOME SAFE.
His thumb moved over the tiny words.
“Where did you get this?”
“From your father.”
“Anthony?”
Lena nodded.
“Three years ago.”
Roman stared at her.
“You saw him.”
“Yes.”
“Alive.”
“Yes.”
“Before you disappeared?”
Her eyes shifted toward Eleanor.
“No.”
Roman felt the room narrow.
“When?”
Lena’s voice cracked.
“After.”
Eleanor said, “Roman—”
He held up one hand.
“Lena.”
She understood.
Roman needed to hear it from her.
Lena pulled Sophie closer.
“Anthony came to Hawthorne.”
Roman’s face emptied.
“How many times?”
“At first?”
She swallowed.
“Every week.”
Roman slowly turned toward Eleanor.
“You told me he was dead for twenty-six years.”
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“By hiding my wife from me?”
Eleanor’s composure finally broke.
“I didn’t take Lena.”
Roman stopped.
Eleanor looked directly at him.
“I took Hawthorne away from the man who did.”
Roman turned back to Lena.
For three years, he had imagined kidnappers.
Rivals.
Enemies.
People trying to hurt him through the family he loved.
He had never imagined a dead man.
Lena stepped forward for the first time.
She was still afraid.
But not of Roman.
“Your mother kept us there,” she whispered.
Roman’s eyes hardened.
Lena continued.
“She drugged me when I tried to leave. She threatened Tessa. She lied to you.”
Eleanor absorbed every word without defending herself.
Then Lena said, “But she wasn’t the one who took Sophie and me.”
Roman looked at her.
May you like
Lena’s hand closed around the Saint Christopher medal.
“Your father was.”
