Chapter 8
He turned toward me.
“This is not Bellini’s.”
“I’m aware.”
“A person who entered your mother’s hospital room secretly left instructions for you to meet her.”
“She also returned the notebook.”
“That does not make her trustworthy.”
“No.”
I took a breath.
“But it might mean she wants to talk.”
Mom studied me.
“What do you want to do?”
That question mattered.
Not what Damien wanted.
Not what Mom feared.
What I wanted.
For twenty-seven years, other people had made decisions around me.
Protected me.
Moved me.
Hid things from me.
Wrote my name in files.
Sealed records.
Now the choice was mine.
“I want to meet her.”
Damien opened his mouth.
I raised a hand.
“But not recklessly.”
He closed it.
“I want you nearby.”
His expression changed.
“Nearby?”
“Not beside me. Not inside the room unless I ask.”
“Ava—”
“That is the agreement.”
He thought about it.
Then nodded once.
“Fine.”
Mom smiled faintly.
“What?”
I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That smile means something too.”
“You sound like me.”
“I’ll recover.”
She laughed.
Then her laughter became a cough, and I moved closer.
When it passed, she leaned into the pillow.
Suddenly all the mysteries felt secondary.
“Mom, you need rest.”
“So do you.”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
“And apparently believe that makes sleep optional.”
Damien stood.
“I’ll leave you two.”
Mom looked at him.
“Damien.”
He stopped.
“I’m glad you came.”
He turned slowly.
There was a lifetime between them.
Everything they had lost.
Everything they had misunderstood.
Everything they had never said.
“I should have found you sooner,” he said.
“You tried.”
“I stopped.”
“Because I asked you to.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe not.”
Mom’s eyes softened.
“But we were younger than we thought we were.”
Damien looked down.
Then he walked to her bed and held out his hand.
Mom looked at it for a second.
Then placed hers in his.
No dramatic reunion.
No declarations.
Just two people acknowledging that the past had survived long enough to meet them again.
“Rest,” he said.
“You’re still bossy.”
“You’re still impossible.”
“I know.”
He left.
I stayed with Mom until nearly dawn.
We didn’t talk about clinics or hidden brothers for a while.
We talked about normal things.
Her nurse with the bright red glasses.
The terrible hospital coffee.
My manager at Bellini’s.
She told me to buy new shoes.
I told her to stop inspecting my footwear from a hospital bed.
Then, when the sky began turning pale beyond the window, she said, “Ava.”
“Hmm?”
“There is one more thing you should know.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Your father.”
My body went still.
For everything we had uncovered, that question had somehow remained untouched.
“Do you know who he is?”
Mom looked toward the window.
“Yes.”
My heart pounded.
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he connected to the clinic?”
“No.”
“Connected to Damien?”
Her silence gave me the answer before she spoke.
“Yes.”
I sat straighter.
“How?”
“He worked for Gabriel.”
The room seemed to sharpen.
“What was his name?”
Mom’s eyes filled with tears.
Not fear this time.
Memory.
“Daniel Hart.”
I repeated it silently.
Daniel Hart.
A name I had never heard.
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared the same week Gabriel did.”
My breath caught.
“Together?”
“I never knew.”
“Did he know about me?”
“Yes.”
The answer hurt more than I expected.
“Did he want me?”
Mom reached for my hand.
“With everything he had.”
I looked away because tears came too quickly.
For years, the blank space beside Father on my birth certificate had felt like abandonment.
A man who had chosen absence.
Now even that certainty was gone.
“What did he look like?”
Mom smiled through tears.
“Like you when you’re trying not to laugh.”
I laughed anyway.
It broke in the middle.
She squeezed my fingers.
“You have his stubbornness.”
“That is disappointing.”
“He would disagree.”
“Did he love you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you love him?”
Mom nodded.
“Very much.”
I leaned my head against her shoulder carefully.
For a while neither of us spoke.
The sun slowly climbed over the city.
At six twenty, my phone buzzed.
A message from Damien.
Two words.
Found something.
I sat up.
Mom watched me.
“What?”
“Damien.”
I opened the message.
He had sent a photograph.
It was a scanned employee record from one of Gabriel’s old companies.
Name: Daniel Hart.
Position: investigator.
Status: terminated.
Reason: conflict of interest.
At the bottom was a handwritten note.
D.H. left with G.M.
G.M.
Gabriel Moretti.
I showed Mom.
Her face changed.
“He left with Gabriel.”
“Apparently.”
“That means—”
Another message arrived.
A second photograph.
An immigration entry record.
Two men had entered Canada twenty-seven years ago under altered names.
One matched Gabriel’s age.
The other matched Daniel’s.
My father.
I stared.
There was a third message.
A recent photograph.
Taken outside a café.
Two older men sat at a table.
One had gray eyes.
The other had dark hair turned almost entirely silver.
Beneath the photograph Damien had written:
Taken four months ago in Vancouver.
Mom covered her mouth.
I zoomed in.
The silver-haired man was laughing.
And suddenly I understood what Mom meant.
The shape of his smile.
The crease beside one eye.
The way his head tilted.
It felt like seeing a piece of my own face belonging to someone else.
“Is that him?”
Mom began to cry.
“Yes.”
My father was alive.
I sat frozen.
For years, I had believed my story began with a missing name.
Now the name had a face.
A city.
A recent photograph.
And possibly an answer.
My phone buzzed again.
Not Damien this time.
Unknown number.
There was no text.
Only an image.
A photograph of me entering Bellini’s two nights earlier.
Taken from across the street.
My stomach tightened.
A second image arrived.
Mom’s hospital window.
A third.
The storage facility.
Damien’s car parked outside.
Someone had been following us.
Then the message appeared.
You are asking the wrong question.
I stared at the screen.
Mom whispered, “What is it?”
Before I could answer, another message arrived.
It contained one sentence.
Daniel Hart is not the mystery.
Then another.
Ask Isabella why your birth record was amended twelve days after you were born.
I slowly lifted my eyes toward Mom.
Her face had gone completely still.
“Mom?”
She looked at my phone.
Then at me.
“Ava…”
“What happened twelve days after I was born?”
She didn’t answer.
I stood.
The room suddenly felt too quiet.
“What happened?”
Mom’s eyes filled with a fear I had not seen in them all night.
Not fear of Richard.
Not fear of Claire.
Not fear of Damien’s family.
Fear of telling me.
Finally, she whispered, “That was the day I learned the baby I brought home from Saint Anne’s…”
She stopped.
My heart seemed to stop with her.
“The baby you brought home was what?”
Mom looked directly into my eyes.
May you like
And said, “Was not the baby I had given birth to.”
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