PART 2
“Luca,” she whispered, “please don’t hate me.”
The plane dropped again.
Glasses rattled in their holders. Somewhere behind us, a child cried out. Lila tightened her fingers around mine, but I barely felt it.
I was staring across the aisle at the woman.
Until that moment, I had registered only fragments of her: dark hair pulled into a loose knot, a gray sweater, shadows beneath her eyes, a nervous habit of rubbing her thumb across the edge of her boarding pass.
Now I looked properly.
There was a faint scar near her left eyebrow.
A small silver ring on a chain around her neck.
And the same careful expression she had worn six years earlier when she stood in the doorway of a Manhattan hotel room and told me her sister had gone home.
“Nora,” I said.
She closed her eyes.
Lila looked between us. “You know Aunt Nora?”
The word aunt moved through me slowly.
I turned toward the little girl beside me.
Her eyes were wide but no longer frightened by the turbulence. She had sensed a different kind of danger—the quiet kind adults created when they stopped saying what they meant.
The fasten-seat-belt sign remained illuminated overhead.
I forced my voice to stay level.
“Your aunt and I met a long time ago.”
Nora leaned toward us. “Lila, sweetheart, would you put your headphones on for a few minutes?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“You only call me sweetheart when something bad is happening.”
Nora’s face folded for an instant.
I looked at Lila’s hand inside mine.
Six years old.
Six years since Claire Walsh had disappeared from my life without explanation.
Six years since I had been told she had chosen a quieter man, a safer life, and a future that did not include me.
I had believed the lie because believing it hurt less than questioning why she had never said goodbye herself.
“What is your mother’s first name?” I asked.
Lila hesitated.
Nora whispered, “Luca, not here.”
I did not look away from the child.
“Lila?”
“Claire.”
The cabin seemed to tilt even after the plane stabilized.
Claire.
I released Lila’s hand only because I had begun holding it too tightly.
She pulled it back into her lap.
“You’re scaring me,” she said.
The accusation was quiet.
It struck deeper than any shouted threat.
“I’m sorry.”
“You look angry.”
“I’m not angry with you.”
“Are you angry with my mom?”
I looked across the aisle.
Nora’s eyes were bright with tears.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
Lila considered this with the grave attention she gave everything.
“My mom says people say ‘I don’t know’ when the truth is too big to fit in their mouth.”
A laugh almost escaped me, but there was no humor in it.
“That sounds like your mother.”
“You really know her?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Nora reached across the aisle. “Lila, we should wait until we land.”
“No.” The girl pulled away. “Everyone keeps waiting to tell me things. Mom said she would explain why we were going to San Francisco when she felt better. You said you would explain why she was in the hospital after we got on the plane. Now he knows her, and you want me to wait again.”
My attention snapped to Nora.
“Claire is in a hospital?”
Nora looked toward the front of the cabin as though hoping a flight attendant might rescue her.
No one came.
“She collapsed three days ago,” she said. “She was taken to St. Catherine’s Medical Center in San Francisco.”
“What was she doing in San Francisco?”
“She moved there last year.”
“With Lila?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
“The doctors aren’t sure yet. They found a problem with her heart.”
Lila’s face tightened.
Nora immediately softened her voice.
“They’re taking care of her. That’s why we’re going to see her.”
“You said she was getting better,” Lila said.
“She is being treated.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Nora had no answer.
Neither did I.
I knew St. Catherine’s. Moretti Development had financed part of its cardiac wing. My name was etched into a donor wall somewhere near a bank of elevators, though I had never cared enough to visit.
Suddenly, every mile between the plane and that hospital felt intolerable.
I leaned back in my seat and looked at the ceiling.
The turbulence eased.
The captain’s voice came over the speakers, calm and practiced, apologizing for the rough air and assuring us that conditions ahead appeared smoother.
Around us, passengers relaxed.
Our row did not.
“Does Claire know you brought Lila to see her?” I asked.
Nora nodded. “She asked me to.”
“Did she know I would be on this flight?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say not to hate you?”
Nora swallowed.
“Because I knew who you were the moment you sat down.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I was trying to decide what to do.”
“For six years?”
Lila looked at her aunt.
Nora flinched.
“That isn’t fair.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
I stood as far as the seat belt allowed and pressed the call button.
A flight attendant approached.
“Is everything all right, Mr. Moretti?”
The use of my name made Nora tense.
“I need a private place to speak when the seat belt sign turns off.”
The attendant glanced between us.
“We have an unoccupied crew rest area behind the galley. I can ask the lead attendant.”
“Thank you.”
I sat down again.
Lila examined me.
“How does she know your name?”
“Some people know who I am.”
“Because you sell buildings?”
“Something like that.”
“Are you famous?”
“No.”
Nora gave me a look that said the answer was more complicated.
Lila noticed.
“Are you in trouble?”
“Not at the moment.”
“My mom says that usually means soon.”
This time I did laugh.
It came out softer than I expected.
For one second, Lila smiled too.
Then she touched the drawing in her notebook.
The tall man in the black suit looked back at me from the page.
One hand in his pocket.
Dark hair.
Straight shoulders.
A face made from a child’s imagination, yet close enough to my own that my chest tightened.
“Why did you draw your father like that?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“I had a dream.”
“What kind of dream?”
“He was standing at the end of a long hallway. I couldn’t see his face, but he wore a black suit. Mom was there too. She kept telling me not to run to him.”
Nora’s fingers curled around the armrest.
Lila went on.
“But I did. Then I woke up.”
The seat belt sign went dark.
Nora unbuckled immediately.
“I’ll explain,” she said. “But not in front of her.”
Lila crossed her arms.
“I’m the person you’re talking about.”
“You are,” Nora said gently. “And that means we need to be careful.”
“Adults say careful when they mean secret.”
Nora looked close to breaking.
I lowered my voice.
“Lila, can you stay here for a few minutes?”
“Why?”
“Because there are things I need to ask your aunt, and I don’t want to make guesses in front of you.”
She studied me.
“Will you come back?”
The question should have been simple.
It wasn’t.
No one had ever asked me that way, as though my return mattered before I had earned the right to matter.
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
I had made promises to bankers, politicians, judges, and men who carried weapons beneath expensive coats.
None had felt as serious as the one I made then.
“I promise.”
Nora asked a flight attendant to sit nearby. Then she followed me toward the galley.
The crew rest area was narrow, with two fold-down seats and barely enough room for our knees not to touch.
The door closed.
The sounds of the cabin faded.
I waited.
Nora stared at the floor.
“Say it,” I told her.
“She’s yours.”
I had known.
Some instinct beneath reason had known from the moment Lila looked at me.
Still, the words struck with the force of a physical blow.
I sat motionless.
Nora began crying silently.
I did not comfort her.
“Did Claire know she was pregnant when she left New York?”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly to be softened.
“How long?”
“Seven weeks.”
“And she told you.”
“Yes.”
“But not me.”
“She tried.”
I looked at Nora.
“What does that mean?”
“She came to your office twice.”
“That’s impossible.”
“She never got past reception.”
“Claire knew how to reach me.”
“You changed your number after the break-in at your apartment.”
I remembered.
A man connected to one of my father’s failed business deals had entered my apartment while I was away. Nothing had been taken. The message had been the entry itself.
I changed numbers, apartments, drivers, routines.
Claire disappeared during the same week.
“She could have contacted my attorney.”
“She did.”
“Which attorney?”
“Daniel Voss.”
A cold clarity replaced the confusion.
Daniel had handled my private affairs for nearly fifteen years. He knew every weakness I refused to name aloud.
“He told her you didn’t want to see her,” Nora continued.
I leaned forward.
“Daniel said that?”
“He met her at a restaurant near Bryant Park. She told him about the pregnancy. He said you believed having a child would make you vulnerable. He said you wanted no legal or personal connection to the baby.”
My hands became still on my knees.
Nora reached into her bag and removed a folded sheet of paper sealed inside a clear plastic sleeve.
“She kept this.”
I took it.
The paper was old along the creases. My name appeared at the bottom.
Luca Moretti.
The signature looked like mine.
The letter did not.
Claire,
I have received your message. I will not contest whatever choice you make, but I do not wish to be involved. My life does not allow for children, and I will not change it to accommodate one. Daniel will arrange financial support if necessary. Do not contact me directly again.
Luca
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
The language was cold, efficient, and almost convincing.
Almost.
“I didn’t write this.”
Nora looked up.
“I know.”
“You know now, or you knew then?”
“I wondered then.”
“Wondered?”
“Daniel had your signature. Claire said the wording sounded like you when you were angry.”
“I was never angry with her.”
“She didn’t know that.”
I looked at the forged signature again.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I was twenty-six. Claire was terrified. Your name was in every newspaper. People said you had enemies. People said your family made problems disappear.”
“People say many things.”
“Yes. And some of them were true.”
I could not deny it.
My family had built its fortune through construction, shipping, and real estate. It had also been built through favors no one recorded and loyalties no one discussed in daylight.
By the time I inherited control, I had spent years pushing the business toward legitimacy. But reputations survived longer than facts.
“Claire believed the letter?” I asked.
“She wanted not to.”
“Then why did she leave?”
“Because Daniel showed her photographs.”
“What photographs?”
“You meeting with men connected to your father’s old organization. Men who had been arrested. Men she had seen outside her apartment.”
I remembered the meetings.
I had been trying to end the relationships my father left behind.
From the outside, they could have looked like the opposite.
“Daniel told her that anyone close to you would be watched,” Nora said. “He said a child would become leverage.”
My anger arrived slowly.
That made it more dangerous.
Nora saw it and pressed herself against the seat.
I noticed.
The reaction stopped me.
For years, fear had been a tool I used without considering what it cost the people standing near me. I had told myself I never raised my voice without reason. I never hurt anyone without necessity.
But fear did not care whether I considered myself reasonable.
“Why San Francisco?” I asked more quietly.
“Claire found work there under our mother’s last name. She became a restoration specialist at a museum. She wanted Lila far from New York.”
“And now she’s ill.”
“Yes.”
“How serious is it?”
Nora rubbed her eyes.
“She has a congenital valve defect. It should have been caught years ago. The doctors believe pregnancy put additional strain on her heart, but the symptoms were mistaken for anxiety and exhaustion. She needs surgery.”
“When?”
“Possibly within days.”
“Why are you only going now?”
“I live in Boston. I was in court when the hospital called. Lila was staying with me for the school holiday.”
“You’re an attorney?”
“A public defender.”
That explained the careful words and the exhaustion.
“Does Claire know you still had the letter?”
“She knows.”
“Did she ever investigate Daniel?”
“No. She wanted distance, not a war.”
“She denied me my daughter because she wanted distance.”
Nora’s eyes flashed.
“She was afraid.”
“So was I.”
“You weren’t pregnant and alone.”
“No. I was simply told the woman I loved had chosen to vanish.”
Nora looked away.
It was the first time I had said the word loved aloud.
Perhaps the first time I had fully admitted it to myself.
“What did Claire tell Lila about me?” I asked.
“Very little. That you didn’t know about her.”
The answer surprised me.
“She didn’t tell her I left?”
“No.”
“But Lila said some people leave before you can ask them to stay.”
“That was something Claire said about her own father. Lila decided it applied to hers.”
I folded the letter carefully.
“Does Lila know Claire is having surgery?”
“Not yet.”
“She knows more than you think.”
“I know.”
“No. You know she asks questions. That is not the same as understanding how much she notices.”
Nora’s eyes filled again.
“I’m doing my best.”
There was no defense in the words.
Only fatigue.
I thought of Lila sitting alone in seat 4B, guarding her pink backpack while strangers decided which pieces of her life she was allowed to know.
“Then we start telling her the truth,” I said.
Nora shook her head.
“Claire should be there.”
“Claire is in a hospital.”
“That doesn’t make this your decision.”
“She is my daughter.”
“You have known that for less than fifteen minutes.”
“And you have known it for six years.”
Nora went pale.
I regretted the cruelty immediately, though the statement was true.
“Claire made me promise,” she whispered.
“Promises made from fear are still choices.”
“And what choices would you have made?” she asked. “Six years ago, if Claire had arrived at your apartment and told you she was carrying your child? Would you have left every dangerous connection behind? Would you have become the kind of father who packed lunches and attended school concerts?”
I opened my mouth.
No answer came.
Six years ago, I had been fighting to keep control of an empire while cutting away the parts that could destroy me. I slept four hours a night. I trusted almost no one. I treated love as a room with too many entrances.
Would I have changed?
I wanted to say yes.
Honesty prevented me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Nora nodded.
“That’s what Claire was afraid of.”
“But I should have been allowed to fail on my own.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “You should have.”
We sat in silence.
The aircraft hummed around us.
Finally, I slipped the forged letter into my jacket.
“I’m keeping this.”
“It belongs to Claire.”
“It contains my forged signature.”
“Make a copy.”
“I will return it to her.”
Nora searched my face.
“What are you going to do to Daniel?”
The old answer rose automatically.
Whatever is necessary.
I thought of Lila noticing that adults used the word careful when they meant secret.
“I’m going to ask him why he did it.”
“And if he lies?”
“He will.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one I have right now.”
When we returned to our seats, Lila had put on her headphones but was not listening to anything. The cord was not connected to the tablet.
She looked at us.
“Did you make guesses?”
“No,” I said. “Your aunt told me the truth.”
“All of it?”
“Enough to begin.”
Nora sat across the aisle.
I took my seat beside Lila.
She did not ask immediately.
Instead, she peeled the label from her juice box in narrow strips and arranged them on her tray table.
I waited.
At last she said, “Are you my dad?”
There are moments that divide a life so cleanly that everything before them becomes a different country.
I had negotiated purchases worth hundreds of millions of dollars without hesitation. I had faced men who wanted my position, my name, or my death. I had stood beside my father’s coffin and felt less fear than I felt looking at a six-year-old girl waiting for my answer.
“Yes,” I said.
Lila stopped peeling the label.
Across the aisle, Nora covered her mouth.
The girl looked at my hair, my hands, my eyes, as though comparing me to details she had collected from dreams.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“My mom didn’t tell you?”
“She tried. Someone stopped her message from reaching me.”
“Who?”
“A man I trusted.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Her chin trembled.
I resisted the impulse to reach for her. She deserved to choose the distance between us.
“Did you want me?” she asked.
The question broke something open inside me.
“I didn’t know you existed.”
“That isn’t the same answer.”
She was right.
I leaned closer, keeping my hands folded.
“If I had known, I would have wanted to meet you. I would have wanted to know what made you laugh, what frightened you, what books you liked, and why you think men in suits hide secrets.”
“Because they do.”
“They often do.”
“Would you have stayed?”
I took a breath.
“I hope I would have.”
She frowned.
“That’s not a promise.”
“No. It’s the truth.”
Lila looked down at her notebook.
“My mom says honest answers are sometimes disappointing.”
“She is right.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
Nora looked toward the window.
Lila’s eyes lifted.
“Do you still?”
I saw Claire as she had been at twenty-eight, standing barefoot in my kitchen and complaining that I owned four coffee machines but no decent tea. I saw her falling asleep with a book open across her chest. I heard her telling me that being difficult was not the same as being unknowable.
“I don’t know who either of us has become,” I said. “But I never stopped caring what happened to her.”
Lila considered that.
Then she slid her drawing toward me.
“You don’t look exactly like this.”
“The suit is accurate.”
“I made you taller.”
“I’m tall.”
“Not that tall.”
A small smile appeared at the corner of her mouth.
“Can I keep it?” I asked.
“No.”
The refusal was immediate.
Then she tore a blank page from the back of the notebook and handed it to me with three crayons.
“You can make your own.”
I stared at the crayons.
Blue, brown, and green.
“I don’t draw.”
“Neither do little kids until somebody gives them crayons.”
Across the aisle, Nora laughed through her tears.
I drew three figures.
The result was terrible.
Lila examined it with concern.
“Why do my arms come out of my neck?”
“I misjudged the proportions.”
“What’s proportions?”
“The reason your arms come out of your neck.”
She giggled.
The sound made several nearby passengers smile without knowing why.
For the rest of the flight, Lila asked questions in bursts.
Where did I live?
Did I have pets?
Why did I wear black so often?
Did I know how to make pancakes?
Had I ever been arrested?
Nora nearly choked on her water at the last one.
“No,” I said.
“Mom said rich men don’t get arrested as much.”
“Your mother and I need to discuss how she explains society to children.”
“She says I’m not too young for facts.”
“She may be right.”
When Lila became sleepy, she leaned against the window rather than against me.
I told myself not to be disappointed.
Ten minutes later, her head slid onto my shoulder.
I went completely still.
Nora watched from across the aisle.
Her expression was not forgiveness.
It was grief for time none of us could recover.
The plane landed shortly before midnight.
My assistant, Matteo, was waiting near baggage claim. He had worked for me for eleven years and had perfected the art of noticing everything while reacting to nothing.
His eyes moved from me to Nora, then to the sleeping child in my arms.
For once, his composure failed.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“Have a car brought around.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And contact St. Catherine’s. Find out who is directing Claire Walsh’s treatment.”
Nora stepped closer.
“You cannot demand access to her records.”
“I know.”
“You sounded like you were about to.”
“I’m asking for the name of her physician.”
“You’re not family on paper.”
The words should not have hurt.
They did.
Lila stirred against my chest.
Matteo looked away politely.
“Arrange rooms at the Fairmont,” I told him. “One for Nora and Lila. One for me.”
Nora shook her head. “Claire has an apartment. Lila and I can stay there.”
“It’s after midnight.”
“We don’t need a hotel.”
“Lila needs sleep.”
“She can sleep at home.”
I stopped.
At home.
Not my home.
Claire’s home.
Lila’s home.
A place I had never seen, filled with evidence of six years I had missed.
“You’re right,” I said.
Nora looked surprised.
“I’ll take you there.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“I know.”
The drive through San Francisco was quiet.
Fog pressed low over the city, softening the lights and turning every hill into a shadow. Lila slept beside me in the back seat with her cheek against her backpack.
Nora sat in front.
She directed the driver to a narrow street lined with painted houses and young trees.
Claire lived on the third floor of a modest building above a bookstore.
The apartment was small and warm.
Children’s shoes crowded the entryway. A row of postcards covered the refrigerator. Books were stacked beneath the windows. On one wall hung photographs of Lila from infancy to the present.
I stopped in front of them.
Lila asleep with one fist beneath her chin.
Lila covered in birthday cake.
Lila wearing a paper crown.
Lila at the beach, holding Claire’s hand.
Claire appeared in only a few photographs. She looked older, thinner, but unmistakably herself.
In one image, she stood beside Lila at the Golden Gate Bridge. Wind blew her hair across her face, and her smile was the same smile I remembered.
I touched the edge of the frame.
“She never married?” I asked.
“No,” Nora said.
“Was there anyone else?”
“That is Claire’s story to tell.”
Fair.
Lila woke as Nora carried her toward the bedroom.
“I can walk.”
“You were asleep.”
“I’m not now.”
She looked at me standing among the photographs.
“Are you leaving?”
The question appeared again.
Will you come back?
Are you leaving?
A child did not need many experiences of absence before it became the first thing she expected.
“I’m going to the hospital.”
Her face changed.
“Can I come?”
“Not tonight,” Nora said.
“I want to see Mom.”
“She’s resting.”
“You keep saying that.”
Nora looked at me for help.
I knelt so Lila and I were at the same height.
“Your mother is in a special part of the hospital where visits are limited at night.”
“Is she dying?”
Nora inhaled sharply.
I did not look away.
“The doctors are trying to make her heart stronger.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know whether she is dying. I know she is sick, and I know she is being cared for.”
Tears filled Lila’s eyes.
“Why does everybody keep not knowing?”
“Because knowing something is not the same as controlling it.”
“I hate that.”
“So do I.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
I wiped it away with my thumb.
She allowed me.
“Will you tell her you met me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you tell her I’m mad?”
“Yes.”
“And scared.”
“Yes.”
“And that Aunt Nora said getting a second juice box would make my stomach hurt, but it didn’t?”
Nora sighed.
“I will report all relevant details.”
Lila looked at me solemnly.
“Will you come back after?”
“Yes.”
This time, the promise came more easily.
At St. Catherine’s, I was met by Dr. Miriam Lee, a cardiac surgeon with silver-streaked hair and the direct manner of someone unimpressed by wealth.
She refused to discuss Claire’s condition without permission.
I respected her immediately.
Nora called from the apartment and identified me as someone Claire would want informed. A nurse then went into Claire’s room and asked her directly.
Several minutes passed.
The nurse returned.
“She agreed to see you.”
My pulse changed.
“What condition is she in?”
“She’s awake but weak. Keep the conversation calm.”
The room was dim.
Machines blinked beside the bed. Rain traced faint lines down the dark window.
Claire lay against white pillows, her skin pale and her hair loose around her shoulders.
For six years, I had imagined seeing her again.
In some versions, I demanded answers.
In others, I turned away before she could give them.
None of those imagined meetings included a hospital gown, a heart monitor, or a crayon drawing folded inside my coat.
Her eyes opened.
They found me immediately.
“Luca.”
My name sounded different in her voice.
Older.
Tired.
Still familiar.
I stood beside the door.
“Hello, Claire.”
A faint smile touched her mouth.
“You always did make simple words sound like accusations.”
“You always gave them too much meaning.”
“That too.”
I moved closer but did not sit.
Her gaze traveled over my face.
“You look the same.”
“I don’t.”
“No,” she admitted. “You look lonelier.”
The accuracy irritated me.
“You look ill.”
“I am.”
There was the woman I remembered.
No wasted politeness.
I took the forged letter from my jacket and placed it on the table beside her bed.
“Nora showed me.”
Claire looked at it but did not touch it.
“I wondered whether she still had it.”
“You knew it was false.”
“Not at first.”
“How long before you suspected?”
“Years.”
I stared at her.
“Years?”
“Daniel contacted me once after Lila was born. He asked whether I needed money. He knew details I had never told him.”
“Why didn’t you contact me then?”
“Because by then I had a baby and no proof that the letter was false.”
“You had me.”
Her eyes closed briefly.
“No, Luca. I had a memory of you.”
The distinction silenced me.
She looked toward the window.
“You were living in a world where every kindness came with an invoice and every friendship had an exit strategy. I loved you, but I never knew whether there was room in your life for something fragile.”
“You made that decision for me.”
“Yes.”
There was no excuse.
No attempt to rearrange the truth.
“I was wrong,” she said.
The anger I had carried into the room found no surface to strike.
“You hid my daughter.”
“I protected mine.”
“She is both.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Claire turned her face toward me.
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes but did not fall.
“I know every birthday I chose not to call you. I know every school form where I left the father’s section blank. I know every time she asked why she had my eyes but not my face. I know what it cost.”
“You don’t know what it cost me.”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m beginning to.”
I took the chair beside the bed.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The monitor measured the silence in steady green lines.
“Lila knows,” I said.
Claire’s eyes widened.
“Nora told you?”
“I told Lila.”
“You had no right.”
“I had every right.”
“She is six.”
“She asked me directly.”
“You should have waited.”
“For what? Another forged letter?”
Claire recoiled.
I regretted it immediately.
The nurse’s warning returned to me.
Keep the conversation calm.
I lowered my voice.
“I did not tell her details. I told her I was her father and that I did not know about her.”
Claire stared at the blanket.
“What did she say?”
“She asked whether I wanted her.”
Claire’s face crumpled.
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. That I would have wanted to know her.”
“That isn’t the whole truth.”
“No. The whole truth is that I don’t know what kind of father I would have been at thirty-three.”
She looked at me.
“And now?”
I thought of the promise I had made in the airplane seat.
The crayons.
The fear in Lila’s voice when she asked whether I was leaving.
“Now I intend to find out.”
Claire’s fingers tightened around the blanket.
“You can’t walk into her life and take over.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“You take over everything.”
“Then I will have to learn not to.”
She searched my face for the arrogance she remembered.
It was still there.
But it was no longer the only thing there.
“I want a paternity test,” I said.
Pain moved across her expression.
“Because you don’t believe me?”
“Because Lila deserves a truth no one can rewrite later.”
After a moment, Claire nodded.
“That’s fair.”
“And I want to know why Daniel forged the letter.”
At his name, something changed in her face.
Fear.
Not memory.
Present fear.
“What?” I asked.
Claire looked toward the door.
“Has he contacted you?”
“Not yet.”
“Luca, you need to be careful.”
“Why?”
She reached for the water beside her bed, but her hand shook too much to lift it.
I held the glass for her.
The intimacy of the gesture unsettled us both.
After drinking, she leaned back.
“Daniel came to San Francisco two months ago.”
My hand stopped.
“He met with you?”
“He was waiting outside the museum.”
“What did he want?”
“He said your father had left instructions.”
“My father has been dead for eight years.”
“I know.”
“What instructions?”
Claire looked at me for a long moment.
“He said Lila was never supposed to exist.”
The room became very quiet.
I set the glass down.
“Explain.”
“He claimed your father knew I was pregnant before he died.”
“That’s impossible. My father died nearly two years before Lila was conceived.”
“I said the same thing.”
“And?”
“Daniel told me the dates I remembered were wrong.”
I almost laughed.
“They are not wrong.”
“I know when my daughter was conceived.”
“Then what did he mean?”
Claire’s breathing became shallow.
The monitor quickened.
I moved closer.
“Claire.”
She pressed a hand to her chest.
A nurse entered immediately, checked the monitor, and told me the visit was over.
Claire caught my wrist before I could stand.
Her grip was weak but desperate.
“There’s something else,” she whispered.
The nurse adjusted a line connected to her arm.
“Ms. Walsh needs rest.”
I looked down at Claire.
“What else?”
Her eyes held mine.
“When Daniel came to San Francisco, he brought a photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“Your father holding a baby.”
I frowned.
“My father held many babies at charity events.”
“This wasn’t an event.”
The nurse stepped between us.
“Mr. Moretti, please.”
Claire did not release my wrist.
“The picture was taken inside your family home,” she said. “There was a date written on the back.”
I felt the first true edge of uncertainty.
“What date?”
“The day you were born.”
I stared at her.
Claire’s fingers slipped from my wrist.
“Daniel said the baby in the photograph wasn’t you.”
Before I could respond, the monitor sounded and the nurse called for assistance.
I was moved into the hallway as medical staff entered the room.
The door closed between us.
For several seconds, I stood beneath the fluorescent lights, unable to move.
My phone vibrated inside my coat.
Daniel Voss.
I watched his name flash across the screen.
Then a message appeared.
I know you met the girl.
A second message followed.
Before you decide what Lila is to you, ask your mother whose son you really are.
