Chapter 3 - THE LETTERS IN THE ATTIC
Aunt June's house sat on a quiet street in Worcester, surrounded by shrubs she refused to trim because she said the birds liked them. I'd spent half my childhood there, sleeping on a foldout couch during my mother's hospital stays. The thought of someone frightening her in her own doorway made me angrier than I had ever been afraid.
We reached the house shortly after noon. Gabriel stayed outside. Mara came inside with me, and Dominic waited on the porch until June invited him in. I wanted to keep my aunt's kitchen from becoming another place where powerful men simply walked in and took over.
June was sitting at the table with a blue teapot between her hands. She said the visitor had worn a delivery-company jacket and carried no package. He had asked about Evelyn's "little blue notebook." When she claimed she didn't know it, he smiled and said it was a shame to put Chloe in danger over old paper.
"I told him I had a very loud neighbor and a baseball bat," June said. "I don't own a bat. But I do have a neighbor."
I hugged her until she complained about her knee.
"Did Mom have a blue notebook?"
June looked toward the stairs. "Maybe. She made me promise not to open her things unless you asked."
In the attic, beneath holiday decorations and a broken fan, we found a metal biscuit tin wrapped in a towel. My mother had always been practical about hiding valuables. The tin contained old photographs, my kindergarten report card, a bracelet I'd made from plastic beads, and a small blue notebook with an elastic band around it.
The first page held grocery lists and recipes. The next showed dates, initials, and amounts of money. Farther in, my mother's careful handwriting became hurried.
HAR.B. 412 — NIGHT CHART CHANGED.
V.S. DID NOT EXPLAIN TRANSFER.
ASKED TO SIGN BLANK PAGE. REFUSED.
Then a sentence underlined twice:
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS, FIND THE WOMAN WITH THE YELLOW SCARF.
I touched the page. "Who is she?"
June closed her eyes. "Your mother used to talk about a woman who cleaned at the hospital. She helped patients fill out forms when nobody else had time. I think her name was Esther."
Mara photographed each page with June's permission, then placed the notebook in a clean envelope. She explained why we should document who had handled it. I was grateful for the ordinary competence of her instructions. Terror was harder to manage when the world became a blur of dramatic claims.
Downstairs, Dominic examined a photograph of my mother at a charity dinner. He stood with it a long moment, staring at someone near the edge of the frame.
"Do you know this man?" he asked.
I looked. A younger Dominic stood beside his brother, Adrian Romano. They had the same dark eyebrows and the same upright posture. Adrian looked warmer, more approachable. Behind them, a doctor in a gray suit smiled at the camera.
"That's Sloane," Dominic said.
"You were there with him."
"It was a hospital fundraiser. I didn't know your mother."
"Was she a patient already?"
"I don't know."
I took the photo away from him. I had grown tired of seeing my mother reduced to one more person on someone else's list.
"She was funny," I said. "She laughed at the wrong part of movies. She couldn't carry a tune, but she sang anyway. When I was eleven and afraid to go to school because girls were making fun of my shoes, she told me being poor was a circumstance, not a character flaw."
Dominic listened without interrupting.
"If someone hurt her, I'm going to find out," I continued. "But don't make this about your family feud. She deserves more than that."
"I agree."
I studied him. "Can you promise me something?"
"Tell me."
"If your brother is responsible, you won't bury it."
He looked toward the photograph. "I won't."
The promise sounded sincere. I wanted to believe it. That frightened me almost as much as the threats.
June made her sandwiches with the same stubborn precision she applied to everything. Bread had to be toasted on one side, never both. Tomato slices went between the lettuce and the cheese so the bread wouldn't get soggy. I'd teased her about it when I was ten. At twenty-six, watching her arrange the plates steadied me. The world could contain forged records and frightened witnesses, and June would still insist on protecting the bread from tomato juice.
As we ate, she told Mara about the year my mother worked nights at a laundry service. Evelyn had come home exhausted, but every morning she'd packed my school lunch and written one small joke on a paper napkin. June had saved several of those napkins in a box. She brought one down from the attic. It said, WHY DID THE TOMATO BLUSH? BECAUSE IT SAW THE SALAD DRESSING.
I laughed and covered my mouth. Suddenly I could hear Mom telling the joke, her voice rising at the end because she couldn't wait for the punch line. It hurt, but the pain had warmth inside it.
Mara asked June whether she remembered anyone visiting Evelyn at home during her final months. June thought carefully, then described a woman in a beige coat who had come twice. She said Evelyn called her "the accountant," but the woman never gave a name. They talked in the kitchen with the faucet running. After the second visit, Evelyn began hiding papers inside cookbooks and old magazines.
"Why didn't you mention that before?" I asked.
"Because you never asked me about strangers visiting the house," June said. "You asked me whether she had a blue notebook. I answered what you asked."
Her practical answer made me think of how much an investigation depended on asking the right questions. I used to believe secrets were always protected by lies. Sometimes they survived because nobody knew where to look.
We searched the cookbooks with June's permission. Between pages of a battered community recipe book, we found a hospital parking receipt, a photocopy of an employee identification badge, and an invoice for a private transport company. The badge belonged to a woman named Sharon Lee, whose photograph had been scratched so heavily that her face was nearly impossible to recognize. Mara recorded the location of each document before moving it.
On the back of the transport invoice, Mom had written: NO DRIVER NAME ON RETURN TRIP. I felt a sick tightening in my chest. The note suggested she had been tracing somebody's movement, not merely her own appointments.
I wanted to call every number on the invoice immediately. Mara stopped me gently. "We have a lot of information, but we don't know which pieces are connected. Give investigators a chance to verify them."
"Waiting makes me feel useless."
"You're doing the hardest thing," she said. "You're staying careful when every part of you wants to run."
After lunch, I walked into the backyard. June's bird feeder hung crookedly from a maple branch. Mom had repaired it the previous summer, balancing on a step stool while I complained that she should let me help. She'd told me I worried too much. I looked at the feeder now and felt angry that I had missed so many opportunities to argue about ordinary things.
Dominic came outside, keeping a respectful distance. He asked whether I wanted company. I said yes, but I didn't know what to say. We stood in silence, watching a cardinal land on the feeder.
"My mother used to hate birds," he said unexpectedly.
I turned. "Why?"
"She thought they mocked her. They'd gather outside the kitchen window whenever she tried to bake. She said they were waiting to criticize the bread."
I laughed despite myself. He looked relieved.
"Do you miss her?" I asked.
"Every day. I was nineteen when she died. I spent years pretending that didn't change me."
He told me his mother had once made him volunteer at a food pantry after catching him laughing at an employee's old coat. She'd said there was no dignity in wealth if it taught him to look down on people. The lesson had faded beneath years of business and violence. Remembering it now seemed to shame him.
"You can still remember it by how you act," I said.
He nodded, looking at the bird feeder. Neither of us made any promises. It was enough to stand there as two people who missed their mothers.
While June made sandwiches, I called the phone number written beside the words YELLOW SCARF. A woman answered after several rings. I asked for Esther. There was silence, and then the woman said, "Evelyn's girl?"
I gripped the phone. "Yes. Who is this?"
"Esther Bell. Your mother was trying to protect people. I told her to stop before she got hurt."
"What people?"
"Patients who were being moved into a private program without proper consent. Some were too sick to understand. Others were told treatment would be free if they signed. Your mother found the list."
Mara moved closer, listening with my permission.
"Where are you?" I asked.
Esther gave an address for a church community center near Roxbury. She said she would meet us the following afternoon, when the volunteers were there. Then she said something that made my hand go numb.
"Evelyn didn't die the night they told you. She was conscious later. She asked for you."
I felt sick. "That's impossible. I was there when she died."
"You were there when they told you she died," Esther said gently. "Those aren't necessarily the same thing."
I stared at the phone long after the call ended.
Dominic had turned pale. For once, he looked like a man who wished money could undo a fact. June touched my arm. Mara asked if I needed a moment.
I needed eight months back. I needed one more conversation with my mother. I needed to know why the final hours of her life had become something I couldn't trust.
Outside, a car engine started. Gabriel looked through the window and spoke quietly into his radio.
A black sedan had been parked across the street for twenty minutes. As he approached, it pulled away.
May you like
I watched it disappear, then opened the notebook again. Beneath a folded grocery receipt was one final note, so small I almost missed it.
CHLOE MUST NEVER KNOW ABOUT THE ROMANO CHILD.
