Chapter 2
Almost.
Then the rent envelope caught my eye on the bedside table.
Forty-three dollars.
I had walked into this apartment prepared to remove them from it.
The realization embarrassed me in a way few things ever had.
I set down my tea.
“The rent is settled.”
Lily immediately stiffened.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“I’m not taking rent from you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we owe it.”
“I own the building.”
“And we live in it.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“You don’t know me well enough to decide that.”
The words could have sounded rude.
Instead, they sounded painfully familiar.
Sarah hid a smile behind her cup.
I looked at her.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Lily leaned forward.
“I don’t want you paying our bills because of what Mom just told you.”
“I’m not paying your bills.”
“You’re forgiving three months of rent.”
“I can call it a family discount.”
“You found out you were family twelve minutes ago.”
“Technically, I was family twenty-four years ago. I’m just late to the meeting.”
Lily stared at me.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
It was small.
One breath of laughter.
But it changed her whole face.
And something happened inside my chest that I could not explain.
I had seen Sarah in her before.
Now I saw myself.
Not in the shape of her eyes.
In the way she tried not to laugh when she wanted to stay annoyed.
My mother used to accuse me of doing the same thing.
Sarah watched us.
For the first time, she looked peaceful.
That frightened me more than her illness had.
I turned toward her.
“What exactly is wrong?”
Lily’s smile disappeared.
Sarah answered before she could.
“An autoimmune condition. Complications from an infection. The doctors think the treatment will work, but recovery is slow.”
“Which hospital?”
“Northwestern.”
“Who’s her doctor?”
“Nate.”
“What?”
“You’ve known us for less than an hour.”
“I’ve known you half my life.”
“Not this half.”
That stopped me.
Sarah’s voice softened.
“You can’t come through that door and repair twenty-four years before dinner.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked at Lily.
She was watching carefully.
Not suspiciously.
Not eagerly.
Carefully.
As though she had learned not to build expectations faster than reality could support them.
I stood.
“I should go.”
Sarah’s face fell before she could hide it.
I saw it.
So did Lily.
“I don’t mean forever,” I said.
Neither woman spoke.
“I mean I need to think.”
Sarah nodded.
“That’s fair.”
I walked to the doorway.
Then I turned.
“Lily.”
“Yes?”
“Keep the forty-three dollars.”
She almost argued.
I raised one hand.
“Consider that my one unreasonable request for today.”
“One?”
“I’m hoping to negotiate for more later.”
Again, that reluctant almost-smile.
I looked at Sarah.
“I’ll come tomorrow.”
She swallowed.
“All right.”
I left before I changed my mind and stayed.
Outside, Chicago looked exactly the same.
Cars crawled through late-afternoon traffic.
Someone argued into a phone beside a bus stop.
A delivery truck blocked half the street.
I stood on the sidewalk and wondered how the world could continue normally after six words changed the shape of mine.
Lily is your daughter.
I drove for an hour without knowing where I was going.
Eventually, I ended up at Moretti’s.
The original restaurant.
My first one.
The place I had opened with twelve borrowed tables, a stove that worked only when kicked in the right place, and enough debt to keep me awake until sunrise.
Now it occupied three storefronts.
The kitchen was modern.
The wine list had won awards.
People waited weeks for Saturday reservations.
But in my office upstairs, I still kept the old wooden desk my father once used in his grocery store.
My younger sister, Anna, found me there.
She was fifty-one, practical, divorced, a mother of two grown sons, and the only person in my family who had never been impressed by my money.
She leaned against the doorway.
“You look terrible.”
“Good evening to you too.”
“You missed the five o’clock meeting.”
“I had something else.”
She entered.
“What?”
I looked at her.
“Do you remember Sarah Bennett?”
Anna’s expression changed immediately.
“Of course.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Before she left.”
“You’re sure?”
Anna frowned.
“Yes. Why?”
I watched my sister carefully.
“Did Ma ever mention her after that?”
“No.”
The answer came naturally.
Then Anna hesitated.
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“She kept something.”
My pulse changed.
“What?”
Anna looked toward the desk.
“There was a box.”
“What box?”
“After Ma died, when we cleared the apartment, there was a small blue tin in the back of her closet.”
I stood.
“What was in it?”
“Letters.”
The room became very still.
“From Sarah?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I didn’t read them.”
“Where are they?”
Anna’s face tightened with confusion.
“I gave them to Dad.”
Of course.
Our father had still been alive then, though barely.
He died eight months after my mother.
“What did he do with them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he give them to me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Anna crossed her arms.
“Nathan, it was twenty-two years ago.”
“Try.”
She looked at me for several seconds.
Then something seemed to return to her.
“Dad said they weren’t his.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘These belong to Nate, but not yet.’”
I stared at her.
“Not yet?”
Anna nodded slowly.
“I remember because it annoyed me. I asked what that meant. He said you were barely keeping the restaurant open and sleeping three hours a night. He said he’d give them to you when things settled down.”
“Things never settled down.”
“No.”
“Then he died.”
“Yes.”
I ran a hand over my face.
“Where would Dad have put something important?”
Anna gave me a look.
“You already know.”
The old grocery store.
Or what remained of it.
After my father lost the lease, he had moved boxes into a storage unit on the west side.
When he died, I paid the fee automatically every year because I could not bring myself to sort through the contents.
For two decades, the unit had remained unopened.
Anna watched me reach for my coat.
“What happened today?”
I stopped.
Then I told her.
Not everything.
Just enough.
Sarah was back.
She was ill.
And Lily was my daughter.
My sister sat down without speaking.
For several seconds, she simply stared at me.
Then her eyes filled.
“Oh, Nathan.”
I looked away.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re about to hug me.”
“I absolutely am.”
“I have somewhere to be.”
She hugged me anyway.
I stood rigid for half a second.
Then I held my sister.
When she stepped back, she wiped her face.
“I have a niece.”
“Apparently.”
“Don’t say apparently.”
“I met her forty minutes ago, Anna. I’m still catching up.”
“What is she like?”
I thought of Lily at the sewing machine.
Her cut fingertips.
Her refusal to accept free rent.
Her almost-smile.
“Stubborn.”
Anna laughed through her tears.
“Then there’s no question.”
The storage facility closed at nine.
We arrived at eight twenty.
The manager recognized my name, disappeared into an office, and returned with records that looked older than some of my employees.
Unit 317.
The lock had rust along one side.
Inside, dust covered everything.
Boxes.
Old shelves.
My father’s grocery-store sign.
A broken lamp from my childhood bedroom.
Anna found our mother’s Christmas decorations and immediately became distracted by a papier-mâché angel I had made in second grade.
“You made this?”
“Throw it away.”
“I’m keeping it.”
“I’ll pay you not to.”
“That only makes me want it more.”
For twenty minutes, searching old boxes felt almost normal.
Then I found my father’s desk drawer.
The desk itself had been dismantled, but Dad had removed the center drawer and packed it separately.
Inside were receipts.
A rosary.
Two fountain pens.
And a blue tin.
Anna stopped beside me.
“That’s it.”
My hands went cold.
I lifted the lid.
Letters.
Dozens of them.
Some were addressed to Elena Moretti.
Some were written in my mother’s handwriting.
And at the bottom were four envelopes with my name.
Nathan Moretti.
The handwriting was Sarah’s.
All four were sealed.
Never opened.
Never delivered.
I sat on an old wooden crate.
Anna remained beside me.
“You don’t have to read them here.”
“Yes, I do.”
The first was dated March 4, twenty-four years earlier.
Nate,
I don’t know if this will reach you. I don’t even know what I want you to say if it does. I’m angry, and I’m scared, and I keep telling myself I left because I needed room to think.
That isn’t the whole truth.
The truth is I left because I knew if I saw you, I would stay.
And staying suddenly frightened me because I have something to tell you that will change both our lives.
I stopped reading.
Anna placed one hand on my shoulder.
I opened the second letter.
Sarah wrote about being pregnant.
About fear.
About how much she loved me.
About not knowing whether love was enough when neither of us had money, stability, or any idea how to raise a child.
The third letter had been written after Lily’s birth.
There was a small photograph inside.
The same photograph I had seen in Sarah’s drawer.
On the back:
Her name is Lily Elena Bennett.
Elena.
My mother’s name.
I lowered the picture.
Anna covered her mouth.
“She named her after Ma.”
I nodded.
My vision blurred.
I opened the fourth letter.
It was shorter.
Nate,
Your mother keeps telling me to stop being afraid and let you decide for yourself.
She’s right.
May you like
I know she’s right.
So this is me finally trying.
