Chapter 4
Then at the NICU doors.
“This isn't the place.”
Sebastian nodded immediately.
“You're right.”
That mattered.
The younger version of him, I suspected, might have demanded answers.
This Sebastian stepped aside.
“You're here for Elliot.”
“Yes.”
“Then Elliot comes first.”
Ruth's eyes softened.
“He always did care about babies.”
Claire looked confused.
“Who?”
Ruth turned back toward Sebastian.
But she didn't answer.
The visit lasted almost two hours.
Ruth held Elliot.
Claire watched.
They spoke quietly.
Sometimes they laughed.
Sometimes one of them wiped away tears.
Nothing miraculous happened.
Years of estrangement did not disappear in an afternoon.
But when Ruth prepared to leave, Claire hugged her.
That was enough.
Sebastian had waited downstairs.
Not in the hallway.
Not outside the unit.
Downstairs.
When Ruth came out of the elevator, he stood.
“I have twenty minutes,” she said.
“That's more than I expected.”
They sat in the cafeteria.
I wasn't there.
I only know what happened because Sebastian told me afterward.
Not everything.
Just enough.
Ruth confirmed she was Celia's sister.
She confirmed she'd helped Celia raise Matteo.
And then she told Sebastian something he had never known.
Celia had not asked him to stay away because she believed he was dangerous.
Not entirely.
She had asked because Matteo had become obsessed with returning to him.
“He waited for you,” Ruth told Sebastian.
Those words broke something open in him.
For years he'd believed the boy had forgotten.
Instead, Matteo had written letters.
Dozens.
Celia never mailed them.
Not because she wanted to erase Sebastian.
Because she was afraid that reopening contact would pull Matteo between two lives.
“She thought she was protecting him,” Ruth said.
“Was she?”
“I don't know.”
That honesty mattered.
“What happened after Celia died?” Sebastian asked.
Ruth looked down at her coffee.
“Matteo was fifteen.”
“And?”
“He found the letters.”
Sebastian's breathing changed.
“The ones he wrote?”
“And the birthday cards you sent.”
Every card.
Every one Sebastian believed might have disappeared.
Matteo had found them.
“He knew I remembered him,” Sebastian said.
“Yes.”
“Then why didn't he contact me?”
Ruth's answer was simple.
“He tried.”
Sebastian returned to the NICU at sunset.
He didn't speak at first.
He sat beside Elliot.
Claire had already gone home.
The baby was sleeping.
I stood beside him.
“What did Ruth say?”
Sebastian looked at the bracelet.
“Matteo wrote to me.”
“When?”
“For years.”
“You never got them.”
“No.”
“And later?”
“He tried to contact me after Celia died.”
“What happened?”
“Someone in my office intercepted the messages.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
Sebastian's face hardened, but not with rage.
With regret.
“My staff had standing instructions not to route personal requests involving family unless they were verified.”
“They thought someone was pretending to be Matteo?”
“Apparently.”
“Did Ruth say where he is now?”
Sebastian looked toward the incubator.
“She doesn't know.”
My heart sank.
“She lost contact with him?”
“Two years ago.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted independence. College. A different name.”
“A different name?”
“Celia eventually remarried. Matteo used his stepfather's surname.”
That explained why Sebastian hadn't been able to find him.
“What name?”
Sebastian opened his hand.
Inside it was a folded piece of paper.
Ruth had written something there.
He handed it to me.
Matteo Bellamy Hayes.
Below the name was a date of birth.
And beneath that, one final note.
Last known address: Pine Valley.
I looked up.
“He came back here?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“Ruth doesn't know.”
Sebastian stared through the glass.
Elliot slept peacefully beneath a knitted blanket.
After a moment, Sebastian reached for The Wind in the Willows.
Something slipped from between the pages and landed on the floor.
A small envelope.
Neither of us had seen it before.
Sebastian picked it up.
His name was written across the front.
Not Mr. Moretti.
Not Sebastian Moretti.
Just:
Seb.
His face changed.
“What?” I asked.
He didn't answer.
He opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
The handwriting was young but careful.
Sebastian read the first line.
Then read it again.
His hand began to tremble.
I touched his arm.
“Sebastian?”
Slowly, he handed me the letter.
It contained only three sentences.
I don't know if you still read this book. Ruth said you used to read it to me in the hospital. I've been trying to decide whether meeting you would make things easier or harder. If you still want to know me, come to Pine Valley Children's Hospital on August 18th.
I looked at the date.
August 18th was next Tuesday.
Sebastian stared at the empty doorway.
“Who put this in the book?”
I didn't know.
Then I remembered something.
The book wasn't from the hospital library.
Sebastian had brought it himself.
The worn copy he'd carried into the NICU on his second morning.
“Where did you get this book?” I asked.
His face went still.
“It was delivered to my house two weeks ago.”
“By whom?”
“There was no return address.”
My pulse quickened.
“You thought it was yours?”
“I thought someone had found an old copy from St. Vincent's.”
He turned the book over.
Inside the front cover, beneath years of fading pencil marks, was a child's handwriting none of us had noticed.
MATTEO M. — AGE 7
Sebastian sat down.
For seventeen years, he'd carried the belief that his little brother had disappeared into another life.
For eight years, he'd comforted children because he couldn't change the past.
And for the last two weeks, the answer he'd been searching for had been sitting in his own hands.
I looked at the letter again.
Then at Elliot.
Then at Sebastian.
“Tuesday,” I said.
He nodded.
For the first time since I'd met him, Sebastian Moretti looked completely afraid.
Not of enemies.
Not of investigations.
Not of whatever stories had built his reputation across the city.
He was afraid of something far more ordinary.
A seventeen-year-old boy walking through a hospital door and asking why his brother had taken so long to find him.
Sebastian folded the letter carefully.
“What if he doesn't come?”
“He wrote the letter.”
“That doesn't mean he'll come.”
“No.”
I pulled the chair beside him closer.
“But it means he wanted you to have the choice.”
Sebastian looked down at the sleeping baby.
Elliot moved one tiny hand beneath the blanket.
Sebastian smiled faintly.
“I spent years thinking Matteo needed me to stay away.”
“Maybe he did then.”
“And now?”
I looked at the letter.
“Now he wants to decide for himself.”
Outside the NICU windows, evening settled over Pine Valley.
Inside, monitors hummed.
Nurses moved quietly between beds.
Claire's photograph stood beside Elliot's incubator.
Ruth's phone number had been added to the family contact sheet.
A baby who'd once had no visitors now had people arranging their lives around him.
And a man who had spent seventeen years believing the most loving thing he could do was disappear had just been given a date, a place, and one more chance to show up.
Sebastian tucked Matteo's letter beneath the old hospital bracelet.
Then he picked up the book.
He opened to the page where he'd stopped earlier.
But before he began reading, he looked toward the NICU entrance.
Tuesday was four days away.
And somewhere in Pine Valley, a seventeen-year-old named Matteo Hayes was deciding whether he was ready to walk through those doors.
Neither of us knew which choice he would make.
But for the first time in seventeen years, Sebastian knew exactly where he needed to be.
By Sunday morning, Sebastian had read Matteo’s letter so many times the folds had begun to soften.
He kept it in the inside pocket of his jacket.
Not because he feared losing it.
Because he seemed to need proof that it existed.
Every few hours, his hand would drift toward the pocket as if checking for a heartbeat.
I noticed on Sunday while he sat beside Elliot’s incubator.
He was supposed to be reading.
Instead, The Wind in the Willows had remained open to the same page for almost ten minutes.
Elliot slept against his chest, one small fist tucked beneath his chin.
“You skipped a paragraph,” I said.
Sebastian looked up.
“What?”
“You read the same sentence twice and skipped the next paragraph.”
He glanced at the book.
“I’m improvising.”
“You’re terrible at it.”
“I’ve been distracted.”
“That’s becoming obvious.”
He gave me a look that would probably have silenced most people in the city.
I had been a NICU nurse too long to be impressed.
“Tuesday,” I said.
His gaze returned to Elliot.
“Tuesday.”
Two days.
Matteo had chosen a date.
A place.
A time implied only by the hospital itself.
No hour.
No phone number.
No promise that he would actually appear.
Only an invitation.
If you still want to know me, come to Pine Valley Children’s Hospital on August 18th.
Sebastian had spent seventeen years wanting exactly that.
Now that it was almost here, he looked like a man trying to prepare for an exam no one had told him how to pass.
“What are you planning to say?” I asked.
His expression darkened with thought.
“I don’t know.”
“That may be the first sensible answer you’ve given me.”
“I considered preparing something.”
“Don’t.”
“I haven’t.”
“Good.”
“I wrote six versions.”
I stared at him.
He sighed.
“I threw them away.”
“What did they say?”
“One began with an apology.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“One began with an explanation.”
“Less good.”
“One was mostly dates.”
I laughed.
Sebastian looked mildly offended.
“What?”
“You were going to greet your estranged seventeen-year-old brother with a timeline?”
“I like facts.”
“Teenagers famously love administrative clarity.”
“I realized that.”
“What did the final version say?”
He was quiet.
“Hello.”
That stopped me.
I smiled.
“That one might work.”
Sebastian lowered his gaze.
Elliot shifted in his arms.
“Hello seems small.”
“Sometimes small is safer.”
He looked toward the windows.
“What if he wants answers?”
“Then answer.”
“What if he’s angry?”
“Then listen.”
“What if he expects me to be somebody I’m not?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
That was the question beneath all the others.
Not whether Matteo would show up.
Not whether Matteo would forgive him.
Whether the boy who had written letters to a brother he remembered from childhood had been writing to a memory instead of a real man.
“You don’t get to control who he hoped you were,” I said.
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
“No.”
“But you do get to decide who meets him on Tuesday.”
His eyes returned to mine.
For once, he had no quick answer.
Claire arrived that afternoon carrying a yellow paper bag and an expression of determination.
“I brought lunch.”
Sebastian looked suspicious.
“You don’t have to feed me.”
“It’s not for you.”
She placed the bag beside Elliot’s incubator.
“It’s for Rachel.”
I smiled.
“Finally, someone here appreciates me.”
Claire pulled out a sandwich.
Then another.
Then a third.
Sebastian raised an eyebrow.
She looked at him.
“That one is accidentally for you.”
“Accidentally?”
“I ordered too much.”
“You wrote ‘Sebastian’ on the wrapper.”
May you like
Claire stared at the name she had written in thick black marker.
“I planned ahead for the accident.”
