Chapter 5 - THE SECOND GIRL IN MY MOTHER’S HOUSE
I went home and opened every photo album I owned.
Not because Detective Chen told me to.
She told me the opposite.
“Do not reconstruct memory under pressure.”
Good advice.
I ignored it.
My childhood albums were inconsistent.
My father had died when I was eleven.
My mother rarely took pictures after.
Before that, she documented everything.
Birthday cakes.
Museum picnics.
School concerts.
One summer, when I was nine, there was a gap.
Three months.
Almost nothing.
Then one photograph in August 2000.
Me on the front steps of our old Evanston apartment building.
Beside me, a little girl.
Maybe two.
Dark hair.
Back turned to camera.
I had always assumed she was a neighbor.
On the back:
Sadie and V.
My hands shook.
V.
Victoria.
I called Detective Chen.
Not Callum.
She came with a forensic interviewer specialized in adult memory and archival identification.
Not to hypnotize me.
Not to “recover” memories.
To prevent me from inventing certainty.
That mattered.
I showed the photograph.
Chen said:
“This supports that a child with V initial was around you. It does not prove identity.”
“I know.”
Did I?
I wanted too badly for pieces to fit.
My mother had perhaps sheltered Anna and Victoria.
If so, why?
And why erase it from family story?
The next day, with her neurologist present, I visited Mom.
She was having a good morning.
I brought no photograph at first.
“Mom, did someone named Anna ever stay with us?”
She stared at television.
Then:
“Anna played badly.”
“What?”
“Piano.”
I smiled despite myself.
“She played piano?”
“Too fast.”
Maybe.
“Did she have a daughter?”
Mom’s face changed.
Then:
“Vicky bit you.”
I stopped breathing.
“She what?”
“Mine.”
Mom pointed at her own arm.
No.
“Vicky bit me?”
She laughed.
“You cried like you’d been shot.”
A memory flickered.
A toddler.
Yellow cup.
Teeth in my forearm.
Was it real?
I could not trust it.
“Did they live with us?”
“Temporary.”
“How long?”
“Until Peter stopped watching.”
My skin chilled.
“So Anna was hiding from him.”
Mom nodded.
Then frowned.
“No, no. Roman watching Peter. Peter watching Roman. Everybody watching. Stupid men.”
I laughed through tears.
That sounded exactly like her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
The window closed.
We stopped.
Later, the neurologist said:
“She appears to retain fragments. Do not press for a coherent narrative.”
I nodded.
It hurt.
My mother may have held one of the biggest secrets in Chicago art history.
And the disease taking her memory meant I would never receive it as a clean story.
Maybe no one ever does.
Police found more through records.
In 2000, Anna used a domestic violence nonprofit under an alias.
Not necessarily physical violence.
Coercive control.
Financial restriction.
Threats involving custody.
Peter Bellamy was named in confidential notes later released under lawful process? We can say investigators obtained with court permission/Anna's archived release? Keep generic.
Anna feared Peter would use Russo criminal history to take Victoria.
Peter feared Romano would use money to take Victoria.
Both accused the other of weaponizing family.
Anna stayed briefly with Evelyn because my mother was one of few neutral people she trusted.
Then Anna left Chicago.
With Victoria?
No.
That was the shock.
Records showed Anna left alone.
Victoria stayed with Evelyn for six more weeks.
Then Peter regained custody through family court after demonstrating paternity and stable residence.
Romano did not contest publicly.
Why?
Anna asked him not to.
She did not want Victoria raised inside Russo world either.
So Peter raised her.
And told her Anna died.
Why?
We did not know.
Then Callum called.
“I need to tell you something.”
“About Victoria?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“She’s coming to Chicago.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“She contacted Detective Chen.”
Not Bellamy lawyer.
Not Peter.
Herself.
“She knows?”
“Some.”
“How?”
“Evan called her before he surrendered.”
There.
Evan had not only worked for Peter Bellamy.
He had apparently reported to Victoria too.
Or tried to warn her.
Victoria agreed to meet investigators first.
Then me?
No.
I had no right.
Callum?
She requested him.
Why?
Because the vault said they were cousins.
Maybe.
The meeting happened at a law office.
I was not there.
Good.
Later Callum told me only what Victoria authorized.
She had always known Anna did not die in childbirth.
Peter’s lie lasted until Victoria was sixteen.
She found letters.
Confronted him.
He said Anna was unstable and chose to leave.
Victoria believed.
Then at twenty-four she found a bank record from Romano Russo’s trust.
Her father had intercepted payments.
Not spent them.
Returned them.
Still.
She began investigating.
That led to Russo Fine Holdings.
That led to Evan.
She hired him quietly.
Not Peter.
There.
Evan had been working for Victoria Bellamy.
Not her father.
My stomach dropped.
“She ordered the theft?”
Callum shook head.
“No.”
“Evan says?”
“He claims Victoria asked him to find the vault records. Nothing more.”
“Then who told the second man to grab me?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“And Peter?”
“May not have known any of it.”
Everything rearranged.
The Bellamy lawyer’s defensiveness may have been about family secrets, not operation.
Victoria had been searching for proof of her mother.
Evan escalated.
Or someone else did.
Callum said:
“Victoria wants to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Your mother.”
Of course.
She wanted the woman who had held her at two years old.
I said no.
Then felt guilty.
Then reminded myself guilt was not consent.
“No.”
Callum answered:
“Okay.”
No persuasion.
A day later I changed my mind.
Not because of him.
Because I looked at the photograph again.
Sadie and V.
The little girl who bit me.
Maybe.
We met at Lakeview Memory Residence with facility permission and Mom’s neurologist nearby.
Victoria Bellamy was twenty-eight.
My age.
That was impossible and obvious all at once.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
Not exactly Callum’s.
Close.
She walked into the music room and stopped.
My mother was asleep in a chair.
Victoria covered her mouth.
“She looks the same.”
No.
She did not.
But maybe memory does that.
Mom opened her eyes.
Looked at Victoria.
For ten seconds nothing.
Then:
“Vicky.”
Victoria collapsed into a chair.
Not dramatic.
Her knees simply failed.
Mom smiled.
“You stopped biting?”
Victoria started crying.
I did too.
There.
No DNA needed for that moment.
Mom remembered.
Fragments.
But real.
Victoria took her hand only after asking.
“May I?”
Mom nodded.
“You got tall.”
We laughed through tears.
Then Mom whispered:
“Anna came back.”
The room went still.
Victoria froze.
“When?”
Mom looked confused.
“Later.”
“How much later?”
No answer.
“Mom,” I said softly. “Do you mean Anna came back after Victoria went with Peter?”
Mom looked at me.
“Red coat.”
Then:
“She said the page was wrong.”
“What page?”
“Provenance.”
My blood chilled.
The missing page.
Again.
Mom continued:
“Painting never Romano’s.”
Callum was not there.
Good.
Victoria and I looked at each other.
“Whose?” Victoria whispered.
Mom’s eyes closed.
“Anna.”
There.
If true, the Caravaggio drawing had belonged to Anna Russo.
Then by inheritance, perhaps Victoria.
That made the painting legally dangerous.
But Mom opened her eyes one more time and said:
“No. Not art.”
I leaned closer.
“What?”
“The page.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“Page proves girl.”
Then she slept.
Victoria stared.
“Proves me?”
Maybe.
The provenance page did more than trace the drawing.
It documented Anna’s custody of an asset in 1998.
If Anna was pregnant then, perhaps attached records proved identity.
Or something else.
Then Victoria said:
“Evan told me there was a note on the page.”
“What note?”
“He said, ‘V.B. is not Bellamy.’”
My chest went cold.
“What?”
Victoria looked sick.
“He thought it meant my surname.”
But maybe V.B. did not stand for Victoria Bellamy.
Maybe it stood for something else.
The missing provenance page had not identified a vault.
It identified the real target.
A person whose identity someone had spent twenty-eight years hiding.
And Victoria Bellamy may not have been Peter Bellamy’s biological daughter at all.
After Mom recognized Victoria, we sat in the facility café with paper cups of coffee neither of us drank.
Victoria looked at me.
“Did you remember me before today?”
“No.”
“That hurts more than it should.”
“I was nine.”
“I know.”
“I might remember being bitten.”
She laughed despite herself.
“Apparently I had range.”
Then her face changed.
“I grew up thinking there was no one from my mother’s life who cared where I went.”
I did not know what to say.
So I did not manufacture comfort.
Victoria continued:
“Peter loved me.”
“Yes.”
“He also controlled the story.”
“Yes.”
“I hate that both are true.”
I thought of Callum.
Romano.
My mother.
“Apparently that’s the family disease.”
She smiled sadly.
Then:
“If Anna left me because she was scared, does that mean she loved me?”
The question was not really for me.
Still.
“I don’t think leaving proves love.”
She looked down.
“But?”
“I also don’t think leaving disproves it.”
Victoria nodded.
That was as far as I could go.
Evidence has limits.
So does empathy.
When we returned to Mom’s room, she was asleep.
Victoria stood at the doorway and did not wake her.
That restraint told me something important about her.
May you like
She wanted answers.
She was not willing to take them at any cost.
