Chapter 2 - “Good.”
Enzo coughed suspiciously into his hand.
I ignored him.
Luca picked up the phone.
“There are things you should know.
But not here.”
“Convenient.”
“You have every reason to be suspicious.”
That stopped me.
People rarely admitted when distrust was justified.
“I can give you my number,” he continued.
“Call if you decide you want answers.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I leave you alone.”
Leo made a soft complaining sound.
I looked at him.
His tiny hand was still stretched toward me.
That hurt in a place I didn’t understand.
I slipped the necklace beneath my blouse.
Leo watched it disappear and frowned.
Luca noticed.
So did I.
The pendant.
My face.
Something familiar.
Maybe that was all it was.
I wanted it to be all it was.
Luca took a business card from his wallet, wrote a second number on the back, and placed it beside my untouched water glass.
“The number on the back is mine,” he said.
“Not an office.”
I didn’t pick it up.
“Who was Isabel to my mother?”
“I’m not certain.”
That sounded carefully true.
“What do you suspect?”
His gaze held mine.
“That they were family.”
The room suddenly felt too warm.
I grabbed my order pad.
“I need air.”
I walked away before anyone could stop me.
Nobody did.
Outside, Philadelphia’s October wind hit my face hard enough to clear my thoughts.
Cars moved along the wet street.
A bus sighed at the curb.
Normal things.
Beautifully normal things.
I stood beneath Aurelia’s striped awning and told myself I was not going to cry over a dead woman I had never met.
Then the restaurant door opened.
Enzo came out alone.
“I’m not here to persuade you,” he said.
“Good.”
He held something in his hand.
Not another business card.
A folded piece of paper.
“I think Luca should have shown you this himself.
But he’s afraid of giving you too much at once.”
“Mr.
Moretti doesn’t strike me as a man who worries about overwhelming people.”
“You met him on a bad decade.”
Despite myself, I laughed once.
Enzo smiled.
Then the sadness returned.
“Isabel changed him.”
I looked away.
“I’m sorry she died.”
“So am I.”
He offered me the paper.
I did not take it immediately.
“What is that?”
“A photocopy.”
“Of?”
“A page from Isabel’s notebook.”
I stared at him.
“Why would I want that?”
“Because your name is in it.”
Every sound on the street seemed to fade.
I took the page.
The handwriting was neat and slanted.
There were dates.
Phone numbers.
Addresses crossed out.
Questions.
At the top, underlined twice, were four words.
Find Mara Bennett’s daughter.
Beneath that:
Avery Bennett.
Approximately twenty-six.
Possibly Pennsylvania.
My knees nearly gave way.
I caught the brick wall behind me.
Enzo stepped forward but stopped before touching me.
“Isabel wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“Why was she looking for me?”
“That,” he said quietly, “is something Luca has been trying to understand since he found the notebook after her death.”
I read the page again.
There were names I didn’t recognize.
Churches.
Schools.
An old apartment building in Scranton where my mother and I had lived when I was seven.
Isabel had gotten close.
Terrifyingly close.
“How long?”
Enzo’s eyes met mine.
“How long what?”
“How long was she searching?”
He hesitated.
“Almost two years.”
I swallowed.
Two years.
While I was serving coffee downtown.
While I was helping my mother through the final months of her illness.
While I was packing our apartment after the funeral.
Somewhere in the same world, a woman with my eyes had been trying to find me.
“Why?”
Enzo shook his head.
“I truly don’t know.”
The restaurant door opened again.
Luca stood there holding Leo, who had finally fallen asleep against his shoulder.
He did not seem pleased that Enzo had given me the page.
But he didn’t take it away.
I looked from the notebook copy to Luca.
“Tell me one thing.”
“Anything I can.”
“Did she know who I was?”
His expression tightened.
“I believe she knew exactly who you were.”
My throat closed.
“And?”
Luca looked at his sleeping son.
Then back at me.
“When Isabel started searching for you, she told me she was trying to repair something her family had left broken for too long.”
A taxi passed through the intersection, tires whispering across wet pavement.
I looked again at my name written in Isabel’s hand.
A woman I had never met.
A cousin, perhaps.
A stranger.
Someone who had spent two years trying to reach me.
And suddenly my mother’s carefully sealed past no longer felt empty.
It felt crowded with people who might still be waiting on the other side.
I folded the paper.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
Luca’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Tomorrow?”
“If you want to explain, you get one hour.”
Relief crossed his face so quickly I almost missed it.
“Where?”
“Public place.”
“Of course.”
“No bodyguards sitting at the table.”
One of the men inside looked offended through the glass.
Luca glanced back.
“Agreed.”
“And bring the notebook.”
He nodded.
I started toward the subway.
“Avery.”
I turned.
Luca stood beneath the restaurant lights, his son sleeping safely against him.
“There’s one more thing.”
I waited.
He glanced at Leo.
“Isabel didn’t just know your name.”
My fingers tightened around the paper.
“What do you mean?”
May you like
Luca’s voice was almost lost beneath the noise of the street.
“She called you her cousin.”
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