Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WITH ROSE'S EYES
Nicholas's family archives occupied two rooms beneath the downtown headquarters of Moretti Holdings. I expected a dark vault filled with secrets. Instead, I found rows of ordinary filing cabinets, old grant reports, and photographs of charity dinners where people smiled beside oversized checks.
His outside counsel, Miriam Cho, met us at the entrance. She was a precise woman in her fifties with glasses on a thin chain. She gave me a written explanation of what she could and couldn't do. She represented Moretti Holdings, not me. I appreciated that she said it before I had to ask.
“If you want independent advice,” she told me, “we can provide contact information for legal aid and you can choose your own lawyer. Nothing in these files requires you to sign away any rights.”
I found myself studying Nicholas. He had insisted on that arrangement. Andrew would have called it disloyalty.
We searched the 1998 grants with a records specialist. The foundation had financed incubators and staff training at St. Agnes. A later audit contained a suspicious notation: three infant transfers could not be reconciled with hospital discharge records. The auditor requested access to the clinic's placement files. The clinic refused, claiming privacy restrictions.
The next year's grant was canceled.
“Who signed the audit?” I asked.
“Eleanor Moretti,” Miriam replied. “Nicholas's mother.”
Nicholas picked up the report. His mother had died when he was twenty-one. He remembered her as warm and stubborn, always arguing that charitable gifts needed oversight.
“She tried to investigate,” he said quietly.
“Did she get anywhere?”
Miriam opened another folder. “She wrote several letters to the clinic's director and requested a state review. The state acknowledged receipt, but the inquiry appears to have closed without findings.”
My disappointment felt physical. One more institution had been told something was wrong and had looked away.
Then the records specialist found a list of outside consultants. Harold Collins had represented the clinic through a company called H.C. Family Services. Payments continued for six months after the grant was canceled.
Nicholas leaned over the ledger. “Those weren't foundation payments.”
“Where did they come from?”
“An unrelated account,” Miriam said. “Someone placed copies here as part of the audit. We need to establish who controlled it.”
A handwritten annotation appeared beside the final payment: P. Collins — placement confirmation.
I thought of Patricia smiling at my mother, complimenting her garden, offering to drive her to appointments. I thought of Andrew bringing flowers, fixing the porch, and learning where Mom kept her documents.
“Could my sister have been placed with a family?” I asked.
“Possibly,” Miriam said. “But we shouldn't identify someone from a financial notation alone. Any contact needs to respect the person who may have been adopted.”
That was the first time someone had reminded me that the missing baby might now be a grown woman with a life of her own. A life that could be shattered by a stranger appearing at her door with a claim about her birth.
At lunch I sat outside the building, watching commuters hurry past. Nicholas joined me with a sandwich and coffee. He asked whether I wanted company. I nodded.
“Do you remember your mother?” I asked him.
“All the time.”
“What was she like?”
“She kept a notebook of promises people made at charity dinners. Six months later she'd telephone them to see if they'd followed through.”
I smiled despite everything. “She sounds difficult.”
“She was. In the best way.”
“Why do you run that world?” I asked before I could stop myself. “The one people are afraid to name?”
He was silent a long moment. “Some of the businesses I inherited have histories I won't defend. I've been trying to move the legitimate parts out from under those arrangements. It takes longer than people think, and I carry responsibility for what happens while I do it.”
“That doesn't sound like an excuse.”
“It isn't meant to be.”
I appreciated the honesty, though it gave me little comfort. He was not a fairy-tale protector. He was a powerful man trying to decide how to use power he had acquired in a dangerous world. I needed to remember that.
My phone rang. The caller introduced herself as Detective Naomi Reyes from the Chicago Police Department's financial crimes unit. Evelyn Price had agreed to speak with investigators. The forged care documents were being examined, and the detective wanted an interview with Mom and me.
“There's something else,” Reyes said. “We found a record associated with the H.C. Family Services account. It lists a female infant, estimated birth date September 1998, transferred to a couple named Warren and Elise Hale.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Where are they?”
“Warren died several years ago. Elise lives in Evanston. They adopted a daughter named Natalie. She's twenty-eight.”
I stared at Nicholas. He was watching my face with concern but didn't interrupt.
“Does Natalie know?” I whispered.
“Not yet, as far as we can tell. We're verifying the records. Please don't contact her until we've confirmed whether this is the same child. We can discuss an appropriate approach.”
I said I understood. Then I ended the call and sat very still.
Natalie Hale.
Twenty-eight.
Rose's age.
I wanted to run to Evanston immediately. I wanted to see her face, hear her voice, hold up the tiny bracelet and ask whether she'd spent her life wondering where she came from. But I remembered Miriam's warning. She was not a clue to be collected. She was a person.
Nicholas waited while I cried. He didn't touch me until I asked him to pass a tissue.
“There's someone,” I said. “Maybe my sister.”
He nodded. “Then we make sure it's true before anyone is hurt.”
That evening Mom sat at Aunt Linda's kitchen table, turning Rose's photograph over and over. I told her what the police had found and what remained uncertain.
“Natalie,” she repeated, testing the name. “A beautiful name.”
“Mom, she might not be Rose.”
“I know.” Mom looked at me. “And if she is, she may not want us.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“We'll respect that,” I said.
Mom reached across the table and held my hand.
“I prayed she'd have someone who loved her. I never prayed she'd grow up waiting for me. I didn't want that for her.”
Just after nine, a new message appeared from Andrew.
That night Miriam explained why the clinic records needed independent review. The foundation had given equipment and training money, not authority to supervise the clinic's admissions. Nicholas's grandfather had been a donor and had likely attended ceremonies there. Those facts did not establish his participation in a false placement, but they meant the family's archive might contain correspondence no one else had kept.
“People often think a missing page is proof of a conspiracy,” Miriam said. “Sometimes it means a clerk mislabeled a box. Sometimes it means somebody destroyed evidence. We need to distinguish the possibilities.”
I felt impatient with the careful language. My mother had lost a child. Evelyn had lost her job. Andrew had entered my life under false pretenses. I wanted someone to tell me who was guilty and why.
“Can we at least say Harold Collins was there?” I asked.
“We can say Evelyn identified him, and we have a payment record bearing his name. An investigator can compare those accounts with travel records and other witnesses. What we shouldn't do is accuse every person connected to the clinic of the same act.”
I nodded reluctantly. It was difficult to learn that patience could protect the truth rather than weaken it.
Nicholas drove me to the lakefront afterward. We sat in the parked car where we could see the dark water between the buildings. He told me that Eleanor Moretti had argued with his grandfather over donations to institutions that refused oversight. She'd believed that a charitable gift without accountability could become a way for powerful people to purchase a good reputation.
“Did your grandfather listen?” I asked.
“Sometimes. Not often enough.”
“Did you?”
“I was a child when the clinic closed. Later I treated the foundation as a duty on my calendar instead of a responsibility to the people it claimed to serve. I have to own that.”
The admission surprised me. I was accustomed to men who explained why every failure was caused by someone else.
“Does it embarrass you to have me see this?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “But embarrassment isn't a reason to hide it.”
We sat quietly for a while. I watched the lights of distant apartments, imagining people cooking dinner, helping children with homework, folding laundry. Ordinary lives. Natalie might be sitting behind one of those windows, unaware that a woman a few miles away was looking for her.
“I don't want to frighten her,” I said.
“Then let the detective make contact first, and let her choose what follows.”
“What if she says no?”
“Then it'll hurt. And you'll respect it.”
I looked at him. “You make that sound simple.”
“It won't be simple.”
I appreciated that he didn't soften the possibility. Hope had been difficult enough for Mom without someone promising an impossible reunion. I wanted to give her good news, but more than that, I wanted to give her truth she could trust.
When we returned to Aunt Linda's house, Mom was awake in the living room. She asked why I looked tired. I told her the archive had raised questions but not yet answered them. She nodded and asked whether I'd eaten. For the first time all day, I laughed.
Even with half our world unsettled, Mom was still Mom.
Stop investigating the Hales. You have no idea what Natalie will lose.
For the first time, I didn't feel only fear.
May you like
I felt the unmistakable chill of confirmation.
Andrew had known her name before I did.
