Chapter 3
A lullaby.
My mother sometimes sang one while cooking.
There had been a name woven into the final verse.
Elena.
I had always assumed it was part of the song.
Maybe it wasn’t.
Damon did not appear downstairs until late afternoon.
He wore a dark sweater instead of his usual suit, and though he moved carefully, he seemed far healthier than he had during the night.
Kirill followed him into the library carrying a stack of folders.
“You’re supposed to rest,” Kirill said.
“I am resting.”
“You’re walking.”
“Very slowly.”
“That isn’t medically recognized as resting.”
I stood outside the library doorway with a tray.
Damon noticed me first.
His expression changed slightly.
“Alina.”
Kirill looked between us.
“I’m suddenly remembering something very important elsewhere.”
He disappeared.
Coward.
I entered and placed tea on the table.
“No coffee?”
Damon asked.
“The doctor said no.”
“The doctor talks too much.”
“Everyone who disagrees with you talks too much.”
“That is not entirely inaccurate.”
I almost smiled.
Then I took my father’s letter from my apron.
Damon saw the handwriting.
His expression became serious.
“Petrova gave it to you.”
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly.
“So now you know.”
“I know about Elena.”
Damon went still.
“You remember the name?”
“Not exactly. My mother used to sing a song with that name in it.”
“That matters.”
“Why?”
He gestured toward the chair opposite him.
I sat.
For once, he did not delay.
“Elena Markovic was your grandmother.”
The room seemed to shift.
“My grandmother was named Sofia.”
“Your father’s mother was.”
I stared at him.
Damon continued carefully.
“Elena was your mother’s biological mother.”
“No.”
“I have copies of the documents.”
“My mother was raised by her parents.”
“She was raised by the people she believed were her parents.”
I shook my head.
“You’re saying she was adopted?”
“Yes.”
“But she knew?”
“I think she learned later.”
“When?”
“That I don’t know.”
I stood and walked toward the window.
The estate grounds stretched beneath pale winter sunlight.
My mother had rarely discussed her childhood.
She said only that her parents were strict, practical people who believed feelings were private.
Both had died before I was born.
“Why would my father investigate that?”
“Because your mother asked him to.”
I turned.
“Before she died?”
“Yes.”
My mother had died first.
A sudden aneurysm when I was seventeen.
No warning.
No time for final explanations.
My father had become quieter afterward.
I had assumed grief was the reason.
Perhaps grief had also given him a mission.
Damon opened one of the folders Kirill had left.
Inside were photocopies.
Birth certificates.
Old letters.
An immigration form bearing the name Elena Markovic.
I sat again.
“Who was she?”
“A young woman from Serbia who came to Chicago in 1987.”
“And?”
“She worked as a translator and office assistant for several immigrant-owned businesses.”
Damon slid a copy across the table.
“She later worked briefly for my father.”
My chest tightened.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The part you were avoiding.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because association with my family tends to make ordinary facts sound worse than they are.”
I thought of my father’s letter.
He is not his father.
“What happened to Elena?”
“She left suddenly.”
“Why?”
“No one knows.”
“What happened to her daughter? My mother?”
Damon placed another paper before me.
An adoption record.
My mother had been three years old.
The names of the adoptive parents matched the grandparents I remembered from photographs.
I read the lines until the words blurred.
“Why was this hidden?”
“Closed adoption records were common. Elena seems to have asked for confidentiality.”
“Did she abandon my mother?”
Damon’s expression tightened.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Because of the letters.”
He opened another folder.
Several photocopied pages were inside.
The handwriting was elegant and slightly slanted.
My darling Mila,
That had been my mother’s childhood nickname.
I touched the page.
“You have the originals?”
“No.”
“Where are they?”
“That’s part of the missing file.”
I looked at him.
“What do the letters say?”
“That Elena intended to return.”
My throat tightened.
“She wrote to my mother?”
“For years.”
“Did my mother receive them?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked through the copies.
Some were dated months apart.
Others years.
There were gaps.
The final letter had been written when my mother was twelve.
Mila,
Someday I hope you will understand that leaving you with another family was not the same as choosing a life without you.
I made the only choice I believed would give you stability.
I have kept every photograph I was sent.
You have your grandfather’s smile.
I stopped reading.
Damon looked away.
For that small kindness, I was grateful.
After a moment I asked, “Who sent Elena photographs?”
“We don’t know.”
“My mother’s adoptive parents?”
“Possibly.”
“What happened to Elena?”
“That is what your father was trying to learn.”
“And what did he find?”
Damon hesitated.
“Something that made him believe she was still alive.”
My head snapped up.
“How old would she be?”
“Seventy-four now.”
A grandmother I had never known.
Possibly alive somewhere.
I tried to imagine telling my mother.
She would have been fifty-eight this year.
She should have been sitting across from me at birthdays, complaining that I worked too much.
Suddenly the mystery felt less like history and more like grief reopening a door.
“Did my mother know Elena might be alive?”
“I think that’s why she asked your father to investigate.”
“Then why didn’t she find her herself?”
“She may have tried.”
Damon pulled another document from the folder.
A handwritten note in my mother’s writing.
I recognized it immediately.
E.M.
Aurora
St. Catherine’s?
Ask about 1998 records.
I frowned.
“Aurora?”
“Yes.”
“St. Catherine’s what?”
“We don’t know.”
“A church?”
“Possibly. A clinic. A school. A shelter. The name was common.”
I read the note again.
“Why did the file disappear?”
“That’s another mystery.”
“From where?”
“My father’s private archive.”
“And who had access?”
“Several people.”
“Your father?”
“He died nine years ago.”
I remembered that vaguely.
Chicago newspapers had covered it.
Businessman Sergei Volkov dies at sixty-two.
I had not cared then.
Damon continued.
“My father kept enormous amounts of paperwork. When I took control of his businesses, I began sorting through archives. Your father contacted me because he believed Elena’s original documents were there.”
“Were they?”
“At first.”
I stared.
“You saw them?”
“Yes.”
“Then they disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Three days before I was supposed to give them to your father.”
I sat back.
“And you never found out who took them.”
“No.”
“Why would anyone care about old adoption letters?”
“That question has bothered me for seven years.”
Maybe this was why Dad never told me.
Not fear.
Uncertainty.
He had hated unfinished explanations.
I looked at Damon.
“Why keep investigating after my father died?”
His answer came quietly.
“Because I gave him my word.”
The simplicity of it struck me.
“Seven years is a long time to keep a promise to a dead man.”
“Yes.”
“You could have stopped.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
My father’s letter returned to me.
Watch what he does when he gains nothing from being kind.
I studied Damon differently.
Not as the man people whispered about.
Not as my employer.
As someone who had been carrying part of my family’s unfinished story without asking for recognition.
“Thank you,” I said.
Damon looked uncomfortable.
It was the first truly surprising thing I had learned about him.
He could face armed men, apparently.
Gratitude was another matter.
“You don’t owe me thanks.”
“I know.”
That made him look at me.
“I’m giving it anyway.”
Something softened between us.
Not trust.
Not yet.
But perhaps the first place trust could grow.
Over the next three days, the atmosphere of the estate slowly returned to normal.
Damon resumed meetings.
Kirill resumed complaining about Damon resuming meetings.
Sloan resumed claiming she knew everything before it happened.
“You did not know my grandmother might be alive,” I told her while we prepared breakfast.
“No, but spiritually, I sensed complications.”
“You said Damon was secretly in love with someone.”
“I may have been directionally incorrect.”
“You said the someone was me.”
She pointed a wooden spoon at me.
“That remains under investigation.”
“Sloan.”
“I’m stirring eggs. I’m not interfering.”
“You are always interfering.”
“It’s one of my strongest qualities.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
It felt good.
Normal.
The laughter faded when Mrs. Petrova entered carrying a small cardboard box.
“This arrived for you.”
I frowned.
“For me?”
The label contained no return address.
Only my name and the estate address.
May you like
Sloan immediately leaned closer.
“Interesting.”
