Chapter 3 - THE ROOM WITH THE WHITE ROSES
The first time I entered the Moretti nursery, I wasn't carrying a cleaning cart. I was carrying a recorder provided by Detective Reyes, and a knot of fear sat just beneath my bandages.
It was two days after the engagement dinner. My physician had cleared me for limited activity, and Reyes had asked whether I could identify the room described on the note. Vivian accompanied me, along with a police technician. Luca waited at the foot of the stairs, refusing to let anyone pressure me to participate.
“If this is too much, Olivia, turn around,” he said.
“I want to help.”
“Helping doesn't mean you have to suffer through everything.”
“I know. I'll tell you if I need to stop.”
The mansion looked different without a party. Someone had removed the ivory roses from the dining table, leaving dark rings where the vases had stood. The crystal glasses were gone. The grand piano sat closed, reflecting the gray afternoon sky.
I remembered rushing across the same floor, a wineglass clenched in my shaking hand. I kept my eyes ahead until we reached the corridor behind Luca's study.
The nursery door was painted a soft cream. A small brass nameplate had been turned toward the wall. When Luca unlocked it, the familiar scent of cedar and old linens drifted toward us.
Inside stood a white crib, a rocking chair, and shelves of picture books arranged by size. Clouds had been painted on the ceiling. A mobile of silver stars hung motionless above the crib. On the windowsill, six dried rose stems rested in separate narrow vases.
Luca touched the back of the rocking chair.
“Elena picked everything,” he said. “She made me paint those clouds three times because she said the first two versions looked like potatoes.”
The hint of a smile vanished. “I hadn't come in here for months.”
Reyes walked slowly around the room. “What do you know about the staff who handled this room after the birth?”
“Vincent supervised the household when I was at the hospital. Dr. Mercer signed the hospital documents. My aunt Teresa arranged the memorial.”
“And the housekeeper?”
“Mrs. Larkin retired that year. She died last winter.”
I moved toward the bookcase. On its lowest shelf sat a wooden box painted with blue birds. My breath caught.
“There,” I said.
The technician photographed it before opening it. Inside were folded paper cranes, ribbons, a baby bracelet with the name ISABELLA, and a handwritten list of lullabies. Beneath the papers lay an envelope addressed to E. MORETTI in a woman's sloping handwriting.
Luca made a sound I couldn't identify.
“Elena's writing,” he whispered.
Reyes asked if he wanted to step outside. He shook his head. The technician carefully unfolded the letter and photographed it before handing a copy to Luca.
My dearest Isabella, it began. If someday you ask why your mother chose a room full of birds, it's because birds always find a way home, even after storms change the sky.
Luca sat on the rocking chair. He read the rest silently, shoulders bent, while the clock on the mantel ticked through the long pause.
“It's a letter for her birthday,” he said finally. “Elena wrote it before the delivery. It isn't evidence of what happened afterward.”
“But it matters,” I said.
He looked up. “Yes. It matters.”
The technician found a second envelope under the lining of the wooden box. This one contained photographs of hospital staff posing with a newborn in a yellow blanket. An unfamiliar woman stood nearest the incubator, wearing a nurse's badge. On the back of the picture someone had written JUNE, NIGHT SHIFT.
Reyes photographed the badge. “June who?”
“June Ainsley,” Luca said after a moment. “Elena liked her. She kept talking to our daughter even when the baby was asleep.”
He looked toward the closed door. “Vincent told me June had taken a job out west.”
Reyes stepped aside to make a call. I remained by the window, studying the branches of a maple tree scraping against the glass. Six years of fear and silence had settled over this room like dust. Yet Elena's letter had been here the entire time, waiting for a daughter who had never needed a grave.
The detective returned with a surprising fact. June Ainsley had never moved west. She had been living forty minutes away, and she had contacted a state investigator several years earlier about irregular infant discharge records at the private hospital where Isabella was born. Her complaint had been closed as unsubstantiated.
“Can we talk to her?” Luca asked.
“Not until we arrange it safely. She's agreed to an interview.”
At the house, Marco was waiting in the kitchen with news. Vincent's office had been emptied overnight. His assistant claimed he'd left for a business conference, but his passport was still in his desk. Vanessa had retained counsel and was refusing to explain why she commissioned Hartwell Inquiries.
“There are more documents,” Marco said. “A draft petition claiming Isabella's father is legally unavailable to care for her.”
“Unavailable?” Luca repeated.
“It says you're a danger because of alleged criminal associations. It also says the woman raising Bella has no standing to object.”
Luca looked furious, but he asked for the documents to be copied to Reyes rather than handled privately. I watched the decision land on Marco's face. He had served Luca's family since his twenties; he was used to making problems disappear. Now his boss was insisting everything be seen.
“Someone wanted the custody fight to be ugly,” I said.
Luca turned to me. “They were counting on my reputation.”
It was true. A judge presented with a wealthy, feared father and a carefully edited packet of allegations might hesitate. Vanessa and Vincent hadn't merely hidden a child. They had prepared a story in which returning Isabella to her father would look like a mistake.
Before leaving, I asked Luca one question I'd been carrying since the hospital.
“Why did Vanessa want to marry you if she knew Isabella was alive?”
He was silent long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer.
“My father set up a trust,” he said. “A large part of our legitimate real estate company sits in it. If I died without a living child, those shares would pass to a charitable foundation. If I had a living child, they would belong to her.”
“Then somebody who knew Isabella was alive knew the shares were hers.”
“Yes.”
“And somebody acting as her guardian might try to control them.”
“Not automatically. A court would oversee any legitimate guardianship and trust management. But someone willing to forge records might try to bypass that oversight.”
I pictured the photograph of Isabella outside her school. Vanessa had watched that child for eight months and thought of ownership.
Before I went downstairs, Luca stopped beside a framed photograph on the hallway table. It showed Elena sitting in a sunlit garden, one hand resting on her stomach. Her smile was broad and unguarded, and there was a splash of blue paint on the cuff of her blouse.
“She wouldn't have wanted revenge to become Isabella's inheritance,” he said. “She always thought I spent too much time winning arguments and not enough time listening.”
I studied the photograph. “What did she do when you made her angry?”
“She made me explain myself without interrupting. Sometimes she made me write it down.”
“Sounds effective.”
“It was devastating.” He almost smiled. “I couldn't intimidate a piece of paper.”
He set the frame down carefully. “Everyone is afraid that when I find Vincent, I will do what people expect of me.”
“Will you?”
“I don't know what I'll feel. I do know Isabella deserves a father who can sit beside her at breakfast, not one who leaves her to visit him through prison glass.”
I had no easy answer. Powerful men in movies made declarations and called them promises. Luca looked at the framed photograph instead of at me, as though he was trying to make a decision that would survive his anger. I thought about my mother waiting for me at home. For both of us, showing up tomorrow mattered more than being frightening today.
“Then keep choosing tomorrow,” I said.
He nodded once. “I intend to.”
At dusk I met Vivian outside the mansion. The autumn wind whipped cold rain against the stone gate. My phone buzzed with an unknown number.
A woman spoke before I could answer.
“Are you Olivia Hayes?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“June Ainsley. I was Isabella's nurse.”
My pulse quickened. “The police said they'd speak to you.”
“They are. But I need you to understand why the police couldn't find the child six years ago.”
I gripped the phone. “Tell me.”
“Because she wasn't listed as Isabella when she left the hospital. Somebody changed her identity while her father was arranging his wife's funeral.”
A bus hissed past on the wet street beyond the gates.
“Who changed it?” I whispered.
June hesitated. “I never saw the person give the order. But I saw who picked the baby up. And the man signed the discharge log with a name that wasn't his.”
“Whose name?”
“Vincent Bardi.”
I looked back toward the mansion, where Luca stood under the portico speaking with Detective Reyes.
June's voice trembled. “Olivia, he wasn't alone. A woman carried the yellow blanket. She said she was taking the baby somewhere safe.”
“Do you know who she was?”
“Yes,” June said. “It was Luca's aunt Teresa.”
May you like
The woman who had arranged Isabella's funeral had carried her out of the hospital alive.
And somewhere beyond the gates, Teresa Moretti was still playing the part of a grieving aunt.
