Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE OLD PHOTOGRAPH
I had walked into Dominic Vale’s house expecting dust.
Instead, I found my dead mother’s past.
“You knew my mother?”
Dominic didn’t answer immediately.
He crossed the hallway and disappeared into another room.
I considered leaving.
Then curiosity defeated common sense.
That happened to me often.
He returned carrying an old wooden box.
Inside were photographs.
He placed one on the kitchen table.
My breath stopped.
My mother stood beside a much younger woman beneath the same kitchen window.
Mom couldn’t have been older than thirty.
Her hair was longer.
Her smile wider.
Beside her stood an elegant dark-haired woman with Dominic’s eyes.
“My mother, Lucia,” he said.
I picked up the photograph.
On the back, handwritten in blue ink:
Lucia and Grace. Christmas at Montrose.
“I don’t understand.”
“Grace worked for my family.”
“She cleaned houses?”
Dominic shook his head.
“She started that way. Eventually she ran this entire property.”
That sounded like Mom.
She could organize a hurricane if somebody handed her a clipboard.
“She never told me.”
“She had reasons.”
I hated that sentence immediately.
“What reasons?”
Dominic opened another photograph.
This one contained four people.
Lucia.
My mother.
A teenage Dominic without his scar.
And me.
I nearly dropped it.
I was maybe eleven or twelve, standing half-hidden behind Mom.
“That’s impossible.”
“You were here twice.”
“I would remember.”
“You spent most of the first visit upstairs watching movies.”
I stared at the picture.
A faint memory moved somewhere beyond reach.
A huge staircase.
Christmas lights.
A woman giving me hot chocolate.
Nothing more.
“Why did Mom stop coming?”
Dominic’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“Because something happened.”
His scar suddenly looked sharper beneath the kitchen light.
My eyes drifted toward it before I could stop myself.
He noticed.
I looked away.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Staring.”
“Everyone does.”
There was no self-pity in his voice.
That somehow made it worse.
“I wasn’t staring because it’s ugly.”
His eyes returned to mine.
“You don’t have to lie.”
“I’m not.”
Silence.
I gestured awkwardly toward his cheek.
“It looks painful. That’s different.”
For several seconds, Dominic said nothing.
Then:
“It was.”
“What happened?”
“The night Grace left.”
My stomach tightened.
Dominic told me men had entered Montrose after midnight.
He had been twenty-four.
His mother was away.
Grace was finishing inventory downstairs.
Someone started a fire in the rear hall to cover a break-in.
Dominic caught one of the intruders.
A shattered window caused the injury that left his scar.
My mother dragged him out before smoke filled the room.
“She saved you.”
“Yes.”
“And then she left?”
“Before sunrise.”
“Why?”
“She believed whoever ordered the attack knew she had seen something.”
I thought about my childhood.
Moving apartments three times.
Mom checking locks twice.
Never explaining why.
“What did she see?”
Dominic looked at the brass key.
“I’ve spent seventeen years trying to answer that.”
My phone rang.
My agency supervisor.
I answered.
“Hi, Marcy. There was a mistake with the Montrose assignment.”
A pause.
Then:
“Elena, what Montrose assignment?”
My stomach dropped.
I looked at Dominic.
“You sent me to 127 Montrose.”
“No, I didn’t.”
I stopped breathing.
Marcy continued.
“Your job today was 127 Monroe Street.”
I stared at the paper in my hand.
May you like
Somebody had changed the address.
And somebody had placed my mother’s key inside my work packet.
