Chapter 5 - THE COUSIN WHO SMILED TOO EASILY
Enzo Moretti had the kind of face that made people trust him before he opened his mouth.
I learned that the next afternoon when he came into Aurelia wearing a midnight-blue suit and carrying a bouquet of white peonies so perfect they looked artificial. I had returned to work because rent still existed, no matter what secrets my childhood contained. Greg had given me my usual section back after a conversation in which I made him promise that none of my shifts would be discussed with Luca without my permission.
Enzo stopped at the hostess stand and looked around as if searching for an old friend.
When his eyes found mine, he smiled.
“Avery Bennett?”
“Depends who's asking.”
He laughed warmly. “Enzo Moretti. Luca's cousin.”
“I've heard the name.”
“Nothing too flattering, I hope.”
I glanced at the flowers. “Those for somebody?”
“For you.”
My stomach dropped.
I didn't touch them.
He set the bouquet on the host stand anyway, his expression never changing. “Luca's had a difficult few months. I wanted to apologize for any inconvenience our family has caused you.”
“That's generous.”
“It is a Moretti weakness.”
I wondered whether lies were another.
Enzo was perhaps thirty-five, with dark hair combed neatly away from his forehead and the kind of easy charm that probably opened doors before his security detail reached them. Unlike Luca, whose weariness showed in the lines beside his mouth, Enzo appeared untouched by responsibility. His eyes, however, were restless. While he spoke, he checked the exits, the staff corridor, the reflection in a brass wall fixture.
“Perhaps you'd let me buy you coffee sometime,” he said.
“No, thank you.”
“Just coffee.”
“I work in a restaurant. Coffee is an occupational hazard.”
He laughed again, but this time his eyes remained still.
“I understand Luca thinks you may have information about the fire,” he said.
“Then you should ask him.”
“I have. My cousin is not exactly known for sharing.”
“Family trait, apparently.”
Enzo studied me for a beat.
“Do you know how many people tried to take advantage of him after Isabel died?” he asked. “Relatives he'd never heard of. Old employees who suddenly remembered promises. Women with photographs. It's been difficult for all of us.”
“I'm sorry to hear that.”
“You understand why some of us are cautious.”
“I'm cautious too. Somebody broke into my apartment and threatened me after I served your cousin dinner.”
For a fraction of a second, surprise flashed across his face. Then it vanished.
“How awful,” he said.
I kept my expression neutral. “Very.”
He reached into his jacket and produced a cream envelope. “If anything else happens, call me directly. I can arrange security without involving Luca.”
He left the envelope on the stand beside the flowers.
“Good to meet you, Avery.”
I watched him walk out. Not once did he ask about Leo.
That bothered me more than the flowers.
After my shift ended, I took the envelope straight to Detective Delgado. It contained a business card, a handwritten phone number, and a note that looked polite until I read it twice.
Some families are better left in the past.
Delgado photographed it, bagged it, and asked whether Enzo had touched me or made an explicit threat.
“No,” I said. “He smiled so much I almost needed sunglasses.”
She didn't smile back.
“We're trying to link a set of fraudulent access requests to the old placement file and the fire investigation,” she told me. “Right now a suspicious visit isn't enough to arrest anyone. But keep telling us about contacts like this.”
I nodded, frustrated by how slowly justice moved when I could feel someone trying to stand too close behind me.
That evening Priya called with the first real break in my adoption history.
She had found Helen Carr.
The former social worker was seventy-three and lived in a retirement community outside Wilmington. She had agreed to speak on the phone but refused to discuss the case in detail until she saw my identification.
“She seemed frightened,” Priya said. “Not confused. Frightened.”
“Of me?”
“Of whoever might hear the conversation.”
We arranged to meet the next morning, with Detective Delgado informed and Nina driving. I was determined not to arrive in another Moretti vehicle. But when I told Luca about the appointment, he offered one useful thing without attempting to take control.
“Would you like Sal to meet you there? He knew Marina well. He might help verify anything Carr says.”
I thought about it. “Only if Priya's there too.”
“Of course.”
“And don't send bodyguards without asking.”
“I won't.”
I could hear Leo babbling in the background. Something soft and desperate tugged at my chest.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Tired. He keeps pulling the chain on Isabel's old bracelet. The pediatrician says his sleep disruption is probably connected to the changes he's had. We're working on a more predictable routine.”
“Good.”
He hesitated. “He smiled when I played that video of Marina.”
“Then maybe you should keep playing it.”
“I do.”
I closed my eyes. “Luca, whatever happened, he deserves to know people loved him.”
“I know.”
He said it with such quiet pain that I suddenly felt ashamed of how easy it was to judge from outside the house.
The next morning we drove toward Delaware under a low gray sky. Nina drank iced coffee and complained that her car's navigation system seemed determined to route us through every toll booth on the East Coast. Priya sat beside me in the back seat reviewing Helen Carr's former licenses and placement timelines. Sal followed in his own car.
The retirement community stood behind a row of maple trees, modest brick buildings arranged around a courtyard with winter pansies in raised planters. Helen Carr met us in a small common room overlooking a pond. She was thinner than I expected, with a walker and a face that seemed permanently set against unwelcome surprises.
She stared at my necklace before she stared at me.
“Oh,” she said softly. “You kept it.”
I sat down very carefully. “You knew my mother?”
Helen nodded.
“Her name was June Vale.”
My breath caught. A real name. Not a case number. Not a crossed-out initial.
“She was a bookkeeper,” Helen continued. “And a very stubborn woman. She worked for a shipping contractor attached to Moretti freight interests. When she discovered falsified medical cargo invoices and illegal transfers, she kept copies. She thought they might help the authorities.”
“Did somebody kill her?” I whispered.
Helen looked toward the window. “Her death was ruled accidental. A car fire. But she had told me two days earlier that people were following her.”
Priya leaned forward. “What happened to Avery and Marina?”
Helen's fingers tightened around the walker.
“June made arrangements through a protective placement program,” she said. “It was never supposed to separate the girls permanently. Marina was fourteen. Avery was seven. June wanted them under different names temporarily while investigators secured the documents.”
“But they stayed separated.”
Helen closed her eyes. “Someone interfered with the file. The court order I received wasn't the same as the one I submitted. Your younger placement was transferred again. Then again. By the time I realized, the program director had retired, the case number was reassigned, and the agency said the contact restrictions came from a judge.”
“Who changed it?”
“I couldn't prove it then.”
I felt a terrible pressure building behind my eyes. For twenty years I had believed the absence of family meant nobody had fought to keep me.
But my mother had fought.
My sister had searched.
Someone else had won.
Helen reached into a canvas bag at her feet and brought out a small envelope with trembling hands.
“I kept this because I couldn't bear to destroy the last thing June gave me,” she said.
Inside was a photograph of two children. One was a teenage girl with dark hair, smiling with her whole face. The other was a little girl with a missing front tooth, clutching a stuffed rabbit.
Me.
I knew myself immediately.
On the back my mother had written: My girls. Until we find the way home.
I pressed the photograph to my chest and cried.
Helen waited until I could breathe again before speaking.
“There is something else you need to know,” she said.
Her voice had changed. She was no longer simply grieving the past.
She was afraid of the present.
“Marina came to see me four months ago,” she said. “She told me she'd uncovered the same accounts your mother once tried to expose. She said she'd finally found the original authorization trail.”
Priya stopped writing.
“Whose authorization?” she asked.
Helen looked straight at me.
“Enzo Moretti's.”
The name struck with all the force of a door slamming.
“And what happened to Marina after that?” I asked.
Helen's hands trembled more violently.
“She called me from a blocked number the night of the fire,” she said. “She told me Isabel had been killed and that she couldn't go to the police because somebody inside the investigation was working for Enzo.”
I stared at her.
“Marina was alive after the fire?”
“Yes.”
“And you never told anyone?”
Helen's eyes filled. “She made me promise. She said if Enzo knew she'd survived, he'd come after you. She'd spent twenty years searching for you and would rather die than lead him to your door.”
I looked at the photograph of my sister and me.
Then at the pendant I had worn since childhood.
May you like
Somewhere in the world, a woman had carried my name for twenty years.
And the family that destroyed hers was now smiling at me across restaurant counters.
