Chapter 5 - THE EMPTY GRAVE
We went to the cemetery before sunset.
My father did not come.
He left after Austo revealed he knew about the grave.
Olindo left screaming threats.
Renata left crying.
I felt nothing.
That frightened me.
Caterina’s grave sat beneath an old maple tree.
I had visited it every birthday since I was nine.
White stone.
Her name.
Her dates.
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER.
Austo’s attorney had obtained an emergency court authorization through a private family proceeding years earlier.
The cemetery record was enough.
There had never been a burial.
No coffin.
No remains.
Only a marker.
I stood in front of the stone.
“She didn’t die?”
Austo stayed several feet away.
“I don’t know.”
“You said the grave was empty.”
“Yes.”
“That means something.”
“It means your father lied about the burial.”
Always careful.
Always refusing to hand me certainty he did not possess.
It infuriated me.
It also kept me sane.
Tobaya brought an archived hospital report.
Caterina supposedly died from complications following pneumonia.
But there was no death certificate filed in Pennsylvania under that date.
A document existed in Italy.
Different spelling.
Different district.
Austo’s investigators had discovered it years ago.
I stared at him.
“You’ve been investigating my family my entire life.”
“My sister disappeared.”
“So I was part of your investigation.”
His expression changed.
There.
A shadow.
“Initially.”
The word hurt.
“And now?”
He held my gaze.
“Now you’re Veronica.”
Nothing else.
No romantic declaration.
No claim.
It was somehow more intimate.
Then Tobaya’s phone rang.
He listened.
Looked at Austo.
Then me.
“We found the woman from the Italian record.”
My body went rigid.
“Caterina?”
“No.”
The name belonged to someone else entirely.
The supposed death certificate had been purchased from a deceased woman’s identity.
Someone had created a paper trail to make Caterina disappear.
I whispered, “Why?”
Austo answered.
“Because dead women aren’t searched for.”
Then Tobaya handed me a photograph received from an investigator in Montreal.
An older woman was leaving a small bakery.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
But I knew the eyes.
I had seen them every morning of my childhood.
Caterina.
Alive.
And beside her walked another woman.
Same age.
Dark hair streaked with silver.
May you like
Same eyes as me.
Sofia.
