Chapter 3 - My Father’s Handwriting
The police advised me not to return to my apartment alone.
That was how I ended up spending the afternoon in a hotel conference room with an officer, my employer, a lawyer Ruth trusted, and a man whose surname had unsettled entire city blocks.
I had imagined better Thursdays.
The lawyer introduced herself as Naomi Price.
Before anyone explained anything, she asked whom she represented.
“Me,” I said.
Ruth nodded.
“I’ll cover the consultation.”
Naomi looked directly at me.
“That doesn’t make her my client. You are.”
I liked her immediately.
Luca remained near the door until Naomi asked him to wait outside for part of the conversation.
He left without argument.
Ruth watched the door close.
Then she folded her hands on the table.
“Three days ago, a colleague handling an estate offered me the breviary for inspection. It had been missing from legitimate catalogues for decades. I recognized the binding.”
“My father’s work.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wasn’t certain. Because I wanted to be certain before reopening something that hurt you.”
“That wasn’t your choice.”
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
She took out her phone and showed me a photograph of the repair.
Beneath the worn leather near the hinge was a tiny gold mark.
Two intersecting lines.
My father had used it on restoration work he wanted to recognize later.
I remembered him drawing it on scraps at our kitchen table.
For a moment, I could smell paste and leather.
“He repaired this before the fire,” Ruth said. “I found a reference in an old invoice. Wescott had expressed interest in the manuscript through a broker. I thought letting him inspect it might establish where it had been.”
“You used me to see what he’d do?”
Her eyes filled.
“I believed it was a routine delivery. I was wrong.”
The apology did not fix anything.
At least she did not ask it to.
Naomi made notes.
“What did Callum know about your father’s work?”
I thought back.
Callum Reed had worked in art insurance when we met. He had loved hearing about the shop, my father, the objects I handled.
I had mistaken questions for interest.
“He asked about Dad’s notebooks.”
“Did he see them?”
“Yes.”
“Did he take photographs?”
My stomach dropped.
“I think so.”
Ruth looked stricken.
Naomi continued gently.
“Where are the notebooks now?”
“In a storage unit. With the rest of my mother’s things.”
My mother had died four years earlier. Sorting her belongings had remained one of those tasks grief kept postponing.
The notebooks were in a blue trunk.
Callum knew that too.
The officer contacted the facility while I provided the unit number. Management agreed to preserve access records and footage for investigators.
We did not rush there ourselves.
For once, waiting felt like doing something intelligent.
Luca returned after Naomi finished speaking with me privately.
He sat across the table.
“My father used your father’s workshop,” he said.
“For restoration?”
“Sometimes.”
“And other times?”
Luca held my gaze.
“For making valuable things easier to sell without questions.”
The room went quiet.
“Are you saying my father helped criminals?”
“I’m saying my father brought stolen objects to legitimate craftsmen. Sometimes he lied about where they came from.”
“Did you know?”
“Not then. I was seventeen when your father died.”
“And now?”
“Now I know enough to be ashamed of what this family called business.”
It was an answer with rough edges.
I trusted those more than polished ones.
Naomi asked whether he had information relevant to the fire.
“My uncle handled the warehouse,” Luca said. “Enzo Ferraro.”
Ruth inhaled sharply.
Luca heard it.
“What?”
“Daniel was afraid of someone named Enzo.”
My hands went cold.
Nobody had told me that before.
Not my mother.
Not Ruth.
Certainly not the investigators who had spoken around me as though sixteen meant invisible.
The officer’s phone rang.
He stepped outside, then returned.
Someone had entered my storage unit two days earlier using an authorized access code.
Callum’s old code.
I had forgotten he still had it.
The facility footage showed him carrying out a blue trunk.
My father’s notebooks were gone.
But that night, while searching the photographs backed up on my old laptop, I found something Callum had never seen.
A picture of my father’s workbench.
An open notebook beside his hand.
May you like
And written across the page, clear enough to enlarge, were seven words:
If it returns, look beneath the prayer.
