Chapter 6 - TWO DEAD WOMEN WERE ALIVE
For twenty-two years, Sofia Castillion Bellucci and Caterina Bellucci had been alive.
Together.
In Montreal.
I looked at the photograph until the faces blurred.
“Why didn’t they come for me?”
That was the question that hurt most.
Not why they hid.
Not why my father lied.
Why they left me.
Austo understood.
He did not answer.
He arranged the flight.
Not a command.
An option.
“If you want to see them, we leave in an hour.”
“And if I don’t?”
“We don’t.”
I stared at him.
“You make everything sound simple.”
“No.”
His gaze held mine.
“I make choices sound like choices.”
I went.
The bakery was closed when we arrived.
Snow had started falling lightly over Montreal.
Austo stayed outside.
“I’m not coming in.”
“Why?”
“Because this is yours.”
I hated how much that mattered.
Tobaya remained near the car.
I entered alone.
A bell rang above the door.
Caterina came from the back room holding a towel.
She saw me.
The towel dropped.
For eleven years, I had imagined seeing my mother again only in dreams.
Dreams are kinder.
In dreams, no one has to explain abandonment.
She whispered my name.
“Veronica.”
Then Sofia appeared behind her.
The photograph had not prepared me.
My own face lived inside hers.
Older.
Sharper.
Broken in places mine had not reached yet.
Nobody moved.
Then Caterina began crying.
I did not.
“Why?”
One word.
Sofia gripped the back of a chair.
“Because Vittorio told us he would kill you if we came back.”
My breath caught.
“He said you were safer believing we were dead.”
Caterina added, “We tried twice.”
“When?”
“When you were six.”
I remembered a woman watching me outside school.
A woman my father’s men dragged away.
I had forgotten.
No.
I had been taught to forget.
“And the second time?”
Sofia’s eyes filled.
“When you were thirteen.”
I remembered being taken suddenly to Italy that summer.
No explanation.
Three months.
My father had moved me because they were close.
I sat down.
Sofia slowly reached into a drawer.
“I kept everything.”
Inside was a stack of letters.
Hundreds.
Birthday letters.
Christmas letters.
Letters for days when she had no idea where I was.
None had been sent.
Because every attempt had been intercepted.
Then she handed me one final envelope.
Different paper.
My father’s handwriting.
It was addressed to Sofia.
The date was last week.
Before my wedding.
I opened it.
One sentence.
AFTER VERONICA MARRIES OLINDO, YOU CAN COME HOME.
My hands shook.
May you like
My wedding had not only been designed to merge families.
It had been the price my father demanded to release my mother.
