Chapter 1 - The Woman in the Photograph
“You’re the man in Mommy’s picture.”
My fingers stopped around the pink sneaker.
Behind me, Bruno’s tail struck the veranda with the steady confidence of an animal who believed he had improved everyone’s morning.
“What picture?” I asked.
Sophie reached into the pocket of her yellow jacket.
She produced a folded photograph with softened corners and a crease running through the middle.
A woman stood beneath a flowering cherry tree, laughing at something beyond the frame. Beside her, six years younger and foolish enough to believe happiness could be kept by wanting it, stood a man with his hand around her waist.
Me.
The woman was Claire Carter.
For six years, I had avoided saying her name aloud.
Now a little girl with one dirty sock held the evidence of my former life between fingers stained purple with marker.
“Where did you get that?”
“Mommy’s book. I was borrowing it.”
“Does she know?”
Sophie looked toward the gate.
That was answer enough.
“Where is your mother?”
“At Aunt Nora’s. She was making breakfast. I was walking with Aunt Nora, but then your dog came through the little gate and took my shoe.”
I looked at Angelo.
“The pedestrian gate?”
“The gardener left it unlatched,” he said.
Bruno lowered his head, suddenly interested in a crack between the stones.
Sophie continued, apparently satisfied that someone would now investigate the theft.
“I took my shoe off because there was a rock. He grabbed it. Aunt Nora yelled, but he ran faster.”
“How far away is Aunt Nora?”
“Right there.”
An older woman appeared beyond the gates, limping heavily and gripping the ironwork.
“Sophie!”
The child turned.
“I found it!”
The woman’s eyes lifted to me.
Her face drained.
I recognized her too.
Nora Carter.
Claire’s aunt.
Six years ago, she had served me coffee in a kitchen too small for the flowers I brought. She had looked at me over the rim of her mug and said, Wealth doesn’t impress me, Mr. Moretti. Being on time might.
“Dante,” she whispered.
Something cold moved through my chest.
Sophie looked between us.
“Everybody knows you.”
I stood slowly.
“Nora.”
She came through the gate, breathing hard.
“I slipped on the curb. She was around the corner before I could—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The gate should have been secured.”
Nora barely seemed to hear me.
Her gaze fell to the photograph.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Sophie’s expression changed.
For the first time, she looked worried.
“Was I not supposed to bring it?”
“No,” Nora said gently. “You weren’t.”
I looked at the child.
Pale hair.
Claire’s mouth.
My gray eyes, down to the tiny amber fleck near the left pupil that my mother used to call a drop of honey.
I remembered Claire standing barefoot in my kitchen, holding a positive pregnancy test she hadn’t yet shown me.
No.
That memory did not exist.
I had never seen a test.
I had only imagined a life with her so often that the possibilities had begun to resemble memories.
“How old are you again?” I asked.
Sophie sighed.
“Five and a half. I already told you.”
“Yes,” I said. “You did.”
Six years since Claire disappeared.
Five and a half.
Behind me, Rico shifted his weight.
I heard the movement as clearly as a gun being loaded.
“Everyone inside,” I told my guards.
Angelo hesitated.
“Boss—”
“Give us privacy.”
For once, I softened an order before it became a threat.
Nora watched me closely.
I knelt again and held out the sneaker.
“May I help?”
Sophie considered it.
“You have to shake it first.”
I shook it.
A pebble fell onto the stone.
She nodded approvingly.
When I slipped the sneaker onto her foot, my hands were not steady.
I had signed agreements that moved millions without a tremor.
I could not fasten a child’s shoe.
Then a woman’s voice cut across the garden.
“Sophie!”
Claire stood just inside the gates.
Her hair was shorter.
Her coat was cheap.
There were shadows beneath her eyes and a grocery-store apron tied around her waist.
She looked at my hand near her daughter’s ankle.
Then she looked at my face.
Fear moved through her so visibly that I felt ashamed before I understood why.
“Get away from my daughter.”
I stood immediately.
Sophie frowned.
“He gave it back.”
Claire crossed the courtyard and pulled her close.
Not roughly.
Desperately.
“Mommy, he’s in your picture.”
“I know.”
Her voice shook.
I wanted to ask a hundred questions.
Where had she been?
Who had hurt her?
Why had she let me believe she had chosen money over me?
But the little girl’s face was pressed against Claire’s coat.
So I asked only one.
“Is she mine?”
Claire’s eyes filled.
May you like
For six years, I had thought silence was the worst answer a person could give.
Then she said, “You don’t get to ask that as though you don’t already know.”
