Chapter 3 - The Name on the Birth Certificate
Griffin did not call Salvatore first.
She called the police.
Then she photographed the envelope where it lay and kept her mother away from the door.
The responding officers asked practical questions.
Who might have sent it?
Had anyone made earlier threats?
Did Roman believe someone knew their daily routine?
Saying the Moretti name changed their expressions.
But the younger officer still crouched beside Roman’s chair and asked whether she needed medical assistance.
That small kindness nearly undid Griffin.
For the first time all evening, somebody was treating her mother as a frightened woman rather than a secret waiting to be solved.
After the officers left, Griffin called Evelyn Hart.
Her mother’s oldest friend lived in Queens and answered with the television playing loudly in the background.
When Griffin explained, the television went silent.
“Pack what you need,” Evelyn said. “You’re staying here tonight.”
“We don’t want to bring trouble to your door.”
“Then we’ll talk about somewhere else. But you’re not making decisions alone at two in the morning.”
By dawn, they were in a short-term rental arranged through someone Evelyn trusted.
Roman had her medication.
Griffin had paid for it before leaving the neighborhood pharmacy, using most of the grocery money in her account.
She would worry about next week later.
At nine, she called the number Salvatore had given her.
He answered immediately.
“Are you safe?”
“For now. Someone left a threat outside our apartment.”
His breathing changed.
“Where are you?”
“I’m not telling you.”
A pause.
“All right.”
“I reported it.”
“Good.”
That answer surprised her.
She continued before he could say anything else.
“I need documents. Anything showing what happened to my mother. And I want you to meet us somewhere public.”
“Name the place.”
“Not yet.”
She ended the call.
Evelyn stood in the kitchen doorway holding two coffees.
“You sound like your mother when she was young.”
“That’s not reassuring this morning.”
Evelyn almost smiled.
At noon, she introduced Griffin to an attorney named Maya Bennett, who handled family and civil matters and knew when to bring in other specialists.
Maya listened to the story without appearing impressed by anybody’s surname.
“First,” she said, “you control whether you establish a relationship. Biological connection doesn’t create a right to your time.”
Griffin’s shoulders lowered.
“Second, we preserve evidence. Third, we separate your immediate safety from twenty-two years of questions.”
Roman sat beside her, quiet and exhausted.
Maya asked for the birth certificate.
Roman took it from the document box.
Griffin had seen copies before, usually folded inside school registration packets.
She had never studied the original.
Father’s name: Salvatore Moretti.
She stared.
“You never changed it?”
“No.”
“But you told me—”
“I know.”
Griffin stood too quickly.
“I need a minute.”
She walked into the hallway and pressed her palms against the cool wall.
There he was.
On an official piece of paper.
Not a possibility.
Not a dramatic stranger’s claim.
A fact her mother had carried between apartments while Griffin made Father’s Day cards for a dead man.
Roman appeared in the doorway but did not approach.
“I was afraid if I changed everything, there’d be nothing left to prove who you were.”
Griffin laughed bitterly.
“So you kept proof for a future you wouldn’t let us have.”
Roman’s face crumpled.
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt more than an excuse would have.
Griffin looked away.
“I’m angry with you.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
Roman covered her mouth.
“I know that too.”
They returned to Maya’s office separately.
Before the meeting ended, Salvatore sent a scanned document through counsel.
A death notification.
Roman’s name.
A date seven months before Griffin’s birth.
And the name of the person who had arranged identification of the supposed remains.
Adrian Moretti.
Attached was a second page.
A private investigator’s invoice.
May you like
The same investigator had been paid again three weeks earlier.
For locating Roman Miller.
