Chapter 4 - THE MOTHER WHO NEVER CAME HOME
My mother had been missing for twenty-one days.
Until that night, I'd told everyone she was visiting relatives in Boston.
It was easier than explaining the truth.
She had left without a suitcase.
Without her medication.
Without the old photograph albums she carried everywhere.
And without answering a single phone call.
I'd filed a missing-person report.
But nobody had found her.
Now I was beginning to understand why.
Luca sat across from me.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I laughed bitterly.
"Because we'd known each other for two hours."
He nodded.
"Fair."
I looked down at the pendant.
The tiny message lay between us.
Find the second daughter.
I thought about Elena.
The sister Mom rarely discussed.
The woman who married into the Moretti family.
The woman who supposedly died five months ago.
Then I remembered something.
Three weeks earlier, Mom had called me at work.
She sounded frightened.
"Avery, sweetheart, if anything happens, remember the blue box."
I'd assumed she was confused.
She'd been exhausted.
Under stress.
But now those words returned with terrifying clarity.
"The blue box," I whispered.
Luca looked up.
"What?"
"My mother mentioned a blue box before she disappeared."
"Where is it?"
I shook my head.
"I don't know."
"Did she have a storage unit?"
"No."
"An old apartment?"
I thought carefully.
Then remembered.
Mom used to keep a blue metal cash box beneath her bed.
She never let me touch it.
When I moved out, she told me it contained tax papers.
I looked toward Luca.
"I know where it might be."
An hour later, we stood outside my mother's small row house in South Philadelphia.
Two police officers had already documented the missing-person case.
I asked them to accompany me while I searched.
Inside, everything looked painfully familiar.
The yellow kitchen curtains.
The chipped ceramic bowl beside the sink.
The family photographs.
My mother had always kept the house spotless.
Now dust covered the furniture.
I walked toward her bedroom.
The bed was neatly made.
Her slippers rested beside it.
I knelt.
Reached underneath.
And pulled out a blue metal box.
My heart pounded.
It was locked.
Then I noticed a small silver key taped beneath the wooden bed frame.
Mom had always been clever.
Too clever to leave something important unprotected.
I unlocked the box.
Inside were photographs.
Letters.
Bank statements.
And two birth certificates.
One belonged to me.
Avery Cole.
Born twenty-seven years earlier.
The other belonged to Elena.
Elena Cole.
Born twenty-nine years earlier.
I stared.
Both listed Margaret Cole as the mother.
But the fathers' names were different.
Mine was blank.
Elena's listed a man named Anthony Moretti.
Luca stopped breathing.
I looked up slowly.
"Anthony Moretti?"
He stared at the document.
"That's my father."
The room went silent.
My hands trembled.
Elena had married Luca.
But her birth certificate listed Luca's father.
A terrible possibility formed.
Then Luca noticed something.
The certificate had been amended.
The original father's name was covered beneath a later notation.
He leaned closer.
"This document may have been altered."
I swallowed.
"Why?"
Luca looked at me.
Then whispered:
"Because if Elena was my father's daughter, she would have been my sister."
I stopped breathing.
The words hung between us.
Impossible.
Horrifying.
Then I noticed a second page attached to the certificate.
A laboratory report.
Dated six months earlier.
I unfolded it.
The report contained a genetic comparison.
Two names.
Elena Cole.
Anthony Moretti.
And one result.
Biological relationship excluded.
I stared.
Luca exhaled.
"Then he's not her father."
But the relief lasted only a second.
Because beneath the report was another note.
Written in my mother's handwriting.
The original birth records were changed to hide the real father's identity.
Luca looked toward me.
Then asked:
"Who is Elena's biological father?"
I turned the final page.
And froze.
May you like
Because the name written there belonged to the man who had arranged Elena's funeral.
Vittorio Moretti.
