Chapter 9 - THE VOICE I HAD WAITED TWENTY-NINE YEARS TO HEAR
I couldn't speak.
The phone trembled against my ear.
"Penelope?" the man whispered.
Tears filled my eyes.
"Are you really my father?"
A broken sound came through the line.
"Yes, my little moon."
I covered my mouth.
For twenty-nine years, I'd grown up believing my father had died.
Now his voice traveled across an ocean.
Older.
Rougher.
But filled with a love I recognized without ever having heard it before.
"Where are you?"
"Trapani."
"Are you safe?"
"For now."
My heart tightened.
"What does that mean?"
He hesitated.
"Carlo knows where I am."
Dominic stood immediately.
I looked at him.
"My father's in danger."
He nodded.
"Put the call on speaker if he's comfortable with that."
I asked Antonio.
He agreed.
Dominic introduced himself.
There was a long silence.
Then Antonio said, "Salvatore's son."
"Yes."
"Your father saved my life once."
Dominic looked toward the house.
"He should have done more."
Antonio sighed.
"We all should have."
I pressed my hand against my chest.
"Papa, what happened to my mother?"
Another silence.
Then Antonio spoke carefully.
"Lucia discovered Carlo's operation before I did. She collected documents and tried to get them to investigators."
"Did Carlo kill her?"
"I don't know."
I closed my eyes.
"Everyone keeps telling me they don't know."
His voice broke.
"I'm sorry."
He explained that Lucia had vanished during the night of a raid.
Antonio had escaped with Salvatore's help.
He'd believed Lucia was killed.
But no body had ever been recovered.
My heart began pounding.
"So she might be alive?"
"It's possible."
I looked at Dominic.
He was already reaching for his phone.
Antonio continued.
"There was one person who knew where Lucia went."
"Who?"
"Agatha."
I stared.
"Agatha told me she didn't know."
"Then she was protecting something."
My thoughts raced.
Agatha's apartment.
The blue book.
The necklace.
The thirty years of silence.
I suddenly remembered a photograph she'd kept beside her bed.
An elderly woman standing in front of a small house near the sea.
Agatha had told me it was an old friend.
But the woman had the same dark eyes as the photograph of Lucia.
I gripped the phone.
"Papa, did Mama have a scar on her left eyebrow?"
Antonio went silent.
Then whispered, "Yes."
My heart stopped.
Because the woman in Agatha's photograph had that exact scar.
And written on the back of the photograph was a name.
Maria Santoro.
I had seen that name before.
May you like
On the label of a package Agatha received every Christmas.
A package sent from a small coastal town in southern Italy.
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