Chapter 3 - The words were written in careful block letters.
SHE SANG TO THE CHILD BECAUSE SHE KNEW THE CHILD WASN’T YOURS.
For one unbearable second, the room lost all air.
Outside, thunder rolled softly beyond the windows.
I thought of Rosalba’s serious eyes. The way Raimondo lifted her when she was afraid. The way she reached for him in sleep. The way love, real love, moved between them without needing blood to prove itself.
“This is cruel,” I said quietly. “That does not make it true.”
Raimondo’s hand tightened around the note.
Before he could answer, Mrs. Petrov appeared in the doorway, breathless.
“Sir,” she said. “Rosalba is awake.”
Raimondo turned sharply.
“She is asking for her mother.”
We hurried back.
Rosalba sat upright in bed, sobbing into Pepe’s worn fur. Her little face was pale and wet, her hair tangled around her cheeks.
“Papa,” she cried when she saw him.
Raimondo crossed the room in two strides and gathered her into his arms.
“I’m here,” he murmured. “I’m here, piccola.”
“She was singing,” Rosalba sobbed. “Mama was singing downstairs.”
“I know.”
The words slipped out of him before he could catch them.
Rosalba lifted her head.
“You heard her?”
He closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
She looked at me.
“Mariela heard too.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
The room became very quiet.
Mrs. Petrov stood near the door, her face pale.
Rosalba wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Mama said the lady with my song would come.”
Raimondo’s arms tightened around her.
“What lady?” he asked carefully.
Rosalba looked at me.
“The one from the picture.”
“What picture?”
Rosalba slipped from his lap and climbed down from the bed. She crossed to her bookshelf, pulled out a picture book about rabbits, and opened the back cover. From inside, she removed a folded photograph.
She carried it to her father.
Raimondo unfolded it.
For the first time since I had entered the Castaldi house, I saw his control collapse completely.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But his face changed so deeply it was like watching stone remember it had once been human.
He looked at the photograph.
Then at me.
Then back again.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Mama put it with Pepe,” Rosalba said. “She said Pepe would know when.”
He turned the photograph toward me.
My knees nearly weakened.
The picture showed Alessia Castaldi seated on a stone wall by the sea, smiling into sunlight. Beside her stood another woman, thin and dark-haired, with tired eyes and one hand resting protectively around a baby wrapped in a white blanket.
The woman was my mother.
The baby was me.
I knew it from the tiny crescent-shaped mark near my left wrist. The same mark I still carried. My mother used to kiss it when I was small and call it proof that the moon had claimed me first.
On the back of the photograph, written in graceful ink, were four words:
Mariela must come home.
The room blurred.
I reached for the bedpost.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
Mrs. Petrov made a small sound behind me.
Raimondo looked toward her.
“You knew?”
Her face crumpled. “No. I suspected only when she sang.”
“When who sang?” he demanded.
“Mariela.” Mrs. Petrov’s voice trembled. “Alessia once said the moon song belonged to the Spinelli women.”
My heart pounded so hard I could hear it.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “My mother was a seamstress. We lived in a small apartment. She never mentioned Alessia Castaldi.”
“Perhaps she was trying to protect you,” Mrs. Petrov whispered.
Protect me.
The phrase moved through the room like a key turning in a lock.
Raimondo stared at the photograph again. “Alessia knew your mother.”
“I don’t know how.”
Rosalba looked between us, frightened by the adult silence.
“Did I do wrong?” she whispered.
“No,” Raimondo said immediately.
He crouched in front of her, still holding the photograph.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“She said the lady would bring the song back.”
“Who said that?”
“Mama.”
“When?”
Rosalba hugged Pepe tighter. “Before the rain night.”
The rain night.
The shouting.
The water.
The disappearance.
The music box playing in a sealed room.
The note designed to wound a father through his child.
And now my mother’s face in a photograph hidden by a missing woman two years earlier.
Raimondo stood slowly.
His eyes met mine.
For the first time, he did not look at me like an employee. Or a stranger. Or a problem to be evaluated.
He looked at me like a question.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I don’t know anymore,” I said.
The honesty left both of us silent.
Then a sound came from down the hallway.
A door closing.
Softly.
Deliberately.
Raimondo’s head turned.
Mrs. Petrov stepped back.
Someone had been listening.
Raimondo moved first, handing Rosalba gently to Mrs. Petrov before crossing the room with frightening speed. I followed as far as the doorway.
The corridor was empty.
But at the far end, near the staircase, a shadow disappeared around the corner.
Raimondo strode after it.
I heard his voice, low and sharp.
“Stop.”
A crash sounded below.
Not violent. Not like glass shattering. More like a table knocked aside in haste.
Mrs. Petrov held Rosalba close.
“Stay here,” she told me.
But I had already seen something lying on the hallway carpet near the stairs.
A small folded paper.
I picked it up.
Inside was a copy of a birth record.
Old.
Creased.
Stamped with a seal from Naples.
My name appeared halfway down the page.
Mariela Spinelli.
Mother: Lucia Spinelli.
Father: Unknown.
Except someone had crossed out Unknown in blue ink and written another name by hand.
Raimondo Castaldi.
My breath stopped.
No.
Impossible.
Raimondo was not old enough. The dates did not fit. I was twenty-six. He was not my father.
Then I saw the second line beneath it.
Legal guardian transfer requested by: Alessia Castaldi.
My fingers went numb.
The birth record had been altered.
Not to reveal a father.
To create a lie.
A lie designed to make Raimondo doubt Rosalba.
A lie designed to make him doubt me.
A lie designed to pull me into this house.
At the bottom of the page, written in the same block letters as the note in Alessia’s room, was a single sentence:
THE WRONG GIRL CAME HOME.
I looked up slowly.
At the far end of the hallway, Raimondo stood in shadow, holding another paper of his own. His face was pale with a kind of fear I had not imagined he could feel.
“What is it?” I asked.
He did not answer.
So I walked toward him, the paper trembling in my hand.
Only when I reached him did I see what he held.
A second photograph.
This one was of my mother standing at the Castaldi gate fifteen years ago, holding my hand.
On the back, in Alessia’s handwriting, were seven words:
If I disappear, find Lucia’s other daughter.
Other daughter.
My blood turned cold.
I stared at the photograph.
At my mother’s tired eyes.
At the hand I did not remember holding.
May you like
At the gate I did not remember seeing.
Then, from downstairs, the music box began playing the moon song again.
