Chapter 4 - THE MOTHER WHO KEPT HER SAFE
“Emily, when I first met you, your name was Clara Moretti.”
I pulled my hand away.
For eighteen years, Margaret Carter had been my mother.
She'd held my hair when I was sick.
Worked double shifts to buy my school uniforms.
Sat through every terrible school play and applauded as though I'd performed on Broadway.
Now she was telling me that even my name hadn't always belonged to me.
“No,” I whispered.
“Sweetheart—”
“My name is Emily.”
“Yes. It is.”
“Then why did you call me Clara?”
My mother stared at the kitchen table.
“Because that was the name you knew when you came to live with me.”
I wanted to stand.
To leave.
To find somewhere that didn't smell like her familiar lavender hand lotion and the chicken soup she'd made whenever I was ill.
But my knees wouldn't cooperate.
“Were you my mother when I was born?”
She closed her eyes.
“No.”
The answer hurt more than I'd expected.
I looked at the framed photographs on our refrigerator.
My eighth birthday.
My high school graduation.
The two of us standing outside my first apartment.
Every picture suddenly seemed to contain a question I hadn't known to ask.
“Who are my parents?”
“I don't know everything about your birth.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“I know.”
She began crying.
I had seen my mother frightened before.
When her doctor discovered the heart condition.
When the mortgage company threatened foreclosure.
When she couldn't afford the medication prescribed after her last hospitalization.
But I'd never seen her look quite so defeated.
“I worked as a pediatric nurse,” she said. “Before you came to me.”
I nodded.
That much I knew.
“Eighteen years ago, I received a call from a social worker I trusted. She said a little girl needed emergency placement.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“You had been living at the Moretti estate. Something happened there, and the adults responsible for you wanted you moved immediately.”
“What something?”
My mother hesitated.
“Somebody claimed you had witnessed an argument involving Luca's father.”
I stared at her.
“Did I?”
“I don't know. You wouldn't speak about it.”
She rubbed her hands together.
“You were frightened of dark hallways. You slept with your shoes beside the bed. Every time a car stopped outside, you hid behind the curtains.”
My throat tightened.
I had vague memories of being frightened when I was little.
But I also remembered my mother sitting outside my bedroom until I fell asleep.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because the first time I mentioned your old name, you cried until you were sick.”
She looked at me.
“I sought advice from a counselor. I was told to give you stability and not force memories before you were ready.”
“That doesn't explain eighteen years.”
“No.”
Her honesty surprised me.
She took a breath.
“I should have told you when you became an adult. I was afraid you would think loving me meant betraying the family you came from.”
I stared at her.
“Did you adopt me?”
“Yes. After a long legal process.”
“Then why did you say somebody might take me back?”
“Because even after the adoption, someone connected to the Morettis kept asking questions about you.”
“Who?”
“I never knew his name.”
I looked down at my necklace.
“Was this mine?”
She nodded.
“You were wearing it when you arrived.”
I opened the locket again.
“The woman in the picture?”
“That's me. We had the photograph taken after the adoption.”
“Then why do I have Clara's necklace?”
“Because Clara was you.”
I was still trying to absorb that when I remembered the photograph from the dinner.
The woman standing beside Amelia and Nicholas.
The gray coat.
The familiar face.
“Mom, did you know Amelia Moretti?”
My mother's expression softened.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Three years ago. Shortly before she died.”
I stared.
“You never told me.”
“Amelia came to find me. She'd discovered that a girl named Clara was missing from the family's records.”
“Did she know I was Clara?”
“Eventually.”
My mother reached for her teacup, then set it down untouched.
“She wanted to meet you. But I asked her to give me time to explain everything first.”
“And did you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Amelia became ill. She died before we could decide what to do.”
The anger inside me grew heavier.
“Did she at least know I was safe?”
“Yes. I promised her.”
I thought about Nicholas holding those two red mittens.
Amelia had hidden a token for a little boy she loved.
And another for a child she was trying to bring home.
“Was she trying to take me away from you?”
My mother shook her head.
“No, Emily. That's what I was afraid of at first. But Amelia told me that bringing you home didn't mean separating you from the woman who raised you.”
I looked at her.
“What did she mean?”
“She wanted you to know where you came from. She wanted the Moretti family to acknowledge that you existed.”
A tear slipped down my cheek.
“Why would she care so much?”
My mother stood slowly.
She walked to the kitchen cupboard and brought down an old biscuit tin.
Inside were birthday candles, postcards, and a small envelope tied with blue ribbon.
She handed it to me.
“Amelia sent this after visiting.”
Inside was a photograph.
It showed my mother in her gray coat, standing beside Amelia and Nicholas at the skating rink.
The original photograph from Nicholas's pocket had been cropped to remove my mother.
But there was something else.
A note in Amelia's handwriting.
Margaret, thank you for loving Clara when my family failed her. Whatever happens next, she must never be made to feel unwanted again.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
“She called me Clara.”
“She knew that name belonged to you.”
I held the note against my chest.
“Why did she make a mitten for me?”
“She asked what you remembered about your childhood. I told her you had kept a little red mitten for years, even after you'd outgrown it.”
I looked up.
“I had one?”
My mother nodded.
“You lost it during a move. You cried for days.”
Suddenly, the two mittens made sense.
Amelia hadn't been asking Nicholas to share his childhood.
She'd been creating a bridge between two children connected by a family that had forgotten one of them.
But something still didn't fit.
“If I was seven when I left, I should remember Luca.”
“You do remember some things.”
“What things?”
My mother hesitated.
“You used to talk about a boy who promised he'd come back for you.”
“A boy?”
“You called him Lucky.”
My heart gave an uncomfortable thump.
Luca.
Lucky.
I thought about the man who'd stood between Vanessa and me that evening.
The man who'd refused to let his son be humiliated.
“Was that Luca?”
“I always believed so.”
I looked toward the window.
For eleven months, I'd worked in Luca Moretti's mansion without either of us recognizing the other.
But eighteen years was a long time.
And I'd stopped using my childhood name.
My mother reached into the tin again.
“There is one thing I never understood.”
She removed a narrow strip of blue cloth.
It had been cut from the inside of a child's coat.
A name was embroidered in white thread.
CLARA M.
Beneath it was a date.
And under the date were three words.
Ask about Daniel.
I stared.
“Who's Daniel?”
My mother shook her head.
“I don't know. You insisted I keep that piece of fabric. You said a woman had sewn it there so nobody would forget.”
I thought of the two blue stitches in Nicholas's mittens.
Amelia had used the same color.
The same careful method.
But the cloth was much older.
“Did Amelia see this?”
My mother nodded.
“And what did she say?”
“She became terribly upset.”
“Why?”
My mother swallowed.
“She said Daniel was the name she'd been searching for.”
I held the fabric closer.
“Did she tell you who he was?”
My mother looked at me for a long moment.
Then whispered, “She said Daniel was the reason Luca's father ordered you sent away.”
Before I could speak, she reached into the tin one last time.
And placed an old photograph beside my hand.
Two children stood on the front steps of a large stone mansion.
A little girl in a gray coat.
And a teenage boy with dark hair.
The boy was Luca.
He held my hand.
Across the bottom of the photograph, in a child's uneven handwriting, were five words.
Lucky promised to find me.
I turned the photograph over.
There was another message.
This one was written in an adult's handwriting.
Daniel was not the one who betrayed her.
And beneath those words was a signature.
May you like
Alessandro Moretti.
Luca's father.
