Chapter 2 - THE ROAD TO BLACKWATER LAKE
The ambulance was traveling toward Blackwater Lake, a place Luca hadn't visited since his father's funeral.
I learned that in the emergency department while an X-ray technician positioned my injured leg beneath a machine that hummed softly in the fluorescent light. Outside the examination bay, carts rattled past and nurses called to one another over the steady pulse of monitors. It was the most ordinary place in Chicago, and I had never been so grateful to be somewhere ordinary.
Dr. Shah returned with the results: a small, nondisplaced fracture of my fibula and significant bruising. The cut on my face needed cleaning; the swelling around my eye needed monitoring. She arranged a walking boot, crutches, and follow-up care. She also documented my injuries because I had told her the truth about Vanessa.
“Would you like to speak to a police officer?” she asked.
I stared at the blue curtain. The answer had been sitting inside me for hours, buried beneath fear about rent, my mother, and the way wealthy families could make problems disappear.
“Yes,” I said. “I would.”
A woman officer named Teresa Alvarez interviewed me while my cheek was still numb from treatment. She did not promise that testimony would be easy. She asked questions twice and wrote things down. When I showed her the photographs I'd taken of Rosa's locked door, she requested the original files rather than letting Daniel forward altered copies. Her carefulness steadied me.
Afterward, I called my mother. She answered on the third ring, coughing softly before she said hello.
“Emma? Honey, you sound tired.”
“I got hurt at work. I'm at the hospital, but I'm okay.”
She did what mothers do. She ignored the word okay and asked every question I hadn't wanted to answer. When I told her my leg was fractured, there was a long silence.
“I can come,” she offered.
“You need your medication and your rest.”
“Don't make yourself smaller so I won't worry,” she said. “I raised you better than that.”
I looked down at the walking boot. “I think I finally told someone what happened.”
“Good,” she whispered. “I'm proud of you.”
Near midnight, Daniel arrived with coffee I didn't want and a folded coat I did. Luca had asked him to tell me where they were going, though I wasn't expected to come.
“The lake house sits on an old private road,” he said. “We have its security plans, but Vanessa's father may have changed them.”
“Why would a medical transfer take someone to a lake house?”
“That's what we're trying to establish.”
I remembered the way Rosa had clutched the wooden box. “Does Rosa know the house?”
Daniel nodded. “She says there was a room upstairs with blue wallpaper. Elena stayed there after Luca was born. Rosa remembers it because she painted over a water stain above the crib.”
A man could spend millions protecting an address and still fail to protect the memory of a stain. That struck me as the first useful thing I'd learned about secrets.
“Is Luca going alone?”
“No. Local police have been notified. He wants an ambulance ready to bring the patient to an independent hospital.”
I glanced at my hospital bracelet. “Tell him not to let anyone decide for Elena again.”
Daniel gave me a serious look. “I will.”
I expected to be sent home after that. Instead, Rosa arrived at the emergency department in a wheelchair pushed by Mrs. Keene. She insisted on waiting until my discharge because, she declared, I had already spent enough time alone in hallways that evening.
Her gray cardigan had been replaced by a soft navy sweater. She looked smaller under hospital lighting, and much more determined.
“Luciano called me,” she said. “He asked what Elena would do if frightened.”
“What did you tell him?”
“She would sing the wrong words to 'You Are My Sunshine.' It used to make the baby laugh.” Rosa touched the back of my hand. “I should have told him that years ago.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Antonio said there were men who would kill her and take Luca to punish him. Later, after Sofia died, every month seemed like the wrong month to destroy the only certainty he had.”
“That wasn't yours to decide.”
“No,” she said. “It wasn't.”
I respected her more for saying it. Rosa had made a terrible choice, but she didn't dress it in the language of sacrifice and demand applause. She sat with the shame and stayed.
By one in the morning I was discharged to a secure guest apartment on the estate grounds, away from Vanessa and the upstairs corridors. Mrs. Keene made tea and left a little bell by the bed, which made me laugh despite myself. Through the window I saw the dark lawn running toward the iron gates.
I should have slept. Instead, I stared at the pale screen of my phone, waiting for news.
At 1:36 a message came from Daniel: ARRIVED. POLICE PRESENT. HOUSE APPEARS EMPTY.
I imagined the lake road in October rain, the headlights cutting between bare trees. I'd never seen Blackwater Lake. I knew only that Luca's father had spent summers there and had forbidden the staff to talk about the place after Sofia died.
At 1:44: MEDICAL TRANSPORT FOUND. DRIVER GONE.
At 1:51, Daniel called.
I answered so fast I nearly dropped the phone. “Did you find her?”
“We found the ambulance behind the boathouse. It has oxygen and a patient bed, but no patient. There are wheelchair tracks going toward the main house.”
“Do the tracks lead inside?”
“They stop at the terrace. Luca wants Rosa to talk us through an older entrance.”
I looked toward the adjoining sitting room where Rosa had fallen asleep. “She's here. I'll wake her.”
The old woman answered the question before I finished it.
“There's a coal door behind the kitchen,” she said. “Antonio had it sealed, but the old brass key was never changed. It's the little key in the base of the wooden box.”
Daniel relayed the information. For several minutes we heard nothing except the hiss of the connection and, distantly, a police radio. Then a door groaned.
“I'm inside,” Luca said, his voice suddenly on the line. “Don't come closer to the phone, Rosa. Just tell me what you remember.”
Rosa leaned forward. “The blue room is above the north porch. There was a sewing machine outside it. Elena kept a photograph of her own mother beneath the mattress.”
“There's a sewing machine,” Luca said.
A floorboard creaked. A second voice ordered someone to stop. The sound made Rosa grip the arm of her chair.
“Luca?” I said.
“I'm all right.”
Then we heard an older woman's voice, weak but furious. “Don't touch me. I told you I won't sign.”
My eyes filled with tears. It was the voice of someone refusing to disappear.
The line shifted as Luca crossed the room. “Elena?”
A silence followed, thick enough to swallow the static.
“Who wants to know?” the woman asked.
“Luciano Moretti.”
Rosa began crying without making a sound.
“I was told,” the woman whispered, “that Luciano died when he was a baby.”
“You were lied to,” Luca said. “I'm here.”
The woman made a sound I had no name for. Not a scream or a sob, but something from deeper than either. I heard Luca speak softly, telling her his age, telling her about Sofia, telling her he was not asking for anything she couldn't give.
Then another voice entered the room.
“Mr. Moretti. Step away from the patient.”
Daniel spoke sharply. “Identify yourself.”
“Dr. Adrian Bellini. I have custody paperwork and a medical directive.”
I saw Rosa's face change at the name. “Adrian,” she breathed. “Vanessa's uncle.”
Over the line, papers rustled. Luca did not move.
“She's an adult,” he said. “Ask her whether she wants to go with you.”
“You don't understand her condition.”
“Then we'll have an independent physician evaluate her. The police are here.”
Adrian laughed. “Your father understood the arrangement. You should honor it.”
Elena interrupted him. Her voice grew clearer with anger. “My name is Elena Marini. I want to leave.”
It was enough. I heard a police officer confirm her statement and direct Adrian toward the hallway. Later I learned his papers named him as a guardian, but the signatures were under challenge and the officer would not permit him to remove Elena against her expressed wishes without verification.
At 2:29 Daniel sent a photograph taken with Elena's permission. She sat beneath a plaid blanket in the back of a medical vehicle, silver threaded through her dark hair. Beside her was Luca, who looked as though the world had tilted on its axis and he was trying to learn how to stand again.
He called me a few minutes later.
“We found her,” he said.
“I know.”
“You were right. She needed to make the choice herself.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes. “Is she safe?”
“For tonight.” He hesitated. “She asked if Rosa was still alive.”
“She is. And she's waiting for you.”
He exhaled. “Thank you, Emma.”
I wanted to tell him that gratitude was unnecessary, that anyone would have unlocked the door. But that wasn't true. I'd nearly left Rosa upstairs because I was afraid of losing my job. I had only kept going because she'd looked at me like someone who had run out of chances.
Before we ended the call, Luca said, “There's something you should know. They weren't bringing Elena to the lake house to hide her.”
“Then why?”
“Adrian had a document waiting. He wanted her to sign away the rights to an account my father established.”
“An account?”
“It was titled the Luciano Trust. The first distribution was scheduled for the day after my wedding.”
I sat very still. Down the hall, Mrs. Keene turned off a light. Rosa watched me, searching my face.
“And who receives it?” I asked.
“According to the form Adrian tried to force her to sign,” Luca said, “my legal spouse.”
May you like
Vanessa wasn't only trying to keep his mother hidden.
She was trying to marry him before Elena could tell him why.
