Chapter 2 - THE SIX MONTHS SOMEONE ERASED
By sunrise, I had learned that a forged signature could travel farther than a real person.
Mine had traveled from a sheet of paper in a lawyer's office to an emergency court filing. It had traveled into a judge's stack of urgent cases. It had nearly traveled all the way to a decision about where a baby would sleep.
I lay in a hospital bed with stitches in both legs, looking at the false affidavit on my phone. It said I had watched Sofia leave Ella at the Moretti mansion on September nineteenth. It said she had not returned. It even described the color of her coat.
On September nineteenth, Sofia had been attending a community college class while her aunt kept Ella. I knew that now because Sofia had sent me a photograph of her attendance record. On that same morning I had been helping my father fill out forms at a rehabilitation clinic.
Whoever wrote the affidavit had not expected anyone to check.
At eight, a woman in a navy suit entered my room carrying a canvas briefcase.
“I'm Mara Keene,” she said. “I represent Luca in several business matters, but not the Bellini family. May I sit?”
I nodded cautiously.
“Before we talk, I want to be clear. You are not my client. I can explain the situation, but you should have your own lawyer if you're being accused of making a false sworn statement.”
“You think I'll be charged?”
“I think someone is counting on you being scared enough to say nothing. I don't intend to help them.”
She gave me the number of an independent legal-aid service and asked whether I would consent to a copy of my hospital records being shared with investigators. I agreed. Then she placed an enlarged copy of the affidavit on the bedside table.
“Look here.”
Beside my forged signature was an employee identification number. It belonged to me. Above that sat a small computer-generated verification code.
“Where did they get it?” I asked.
“From the mansion's payroll database, apparently.”
My stomach sank. In eighteen months, I had used that number to clock in, order cleaning supplies, and request my only two vacation days. I had never imagined it could be used to claim I had witnessed the abandonment of a child.
“Does Luca know?”
“He does. He's requesting an independent forensic review of the system.”
Mara's phone buzzed. She read a message and frowned.
“The judge has agreed to hear objections this morning before considering an emergency placement. Sofia has counsel, an attorney named Elena Park. They're meeting at the courthouse.”
“Can I come?”
She looked at my bandaged legs.
“Not in person. But your statement can.”
I signed nothing until a nurse helped me sit up and read every page. Then I dictated a short account, including the real places I had been on the disputed date. Mara thanked me for insisting on accuracy.
After she left, I called my father.
“Hey, pumpkin,” he said, breathless in the way he sometimes became when the stairs had tired him. “Are you okay? You didn't answer last night.”
I told him enough to be honest without frightening him more than necessary. When I mentioned the hospital, his chair scraped against the kitchen floor.
“I'm coming.”
“Dad, you can't drive in your condition.”
“Then I'll call Frank.”
“You don't have to. I need you to look at the calendar on the refrigerator. September nineteenth.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then I heard paper rustling.
“Physical therapy at ten,” he said. “You took me. We had lunch across from the clinic. You complained that their tomato soup tasted like somebody had washed a spoon in it.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
“Do you still have the receipt?”
“Claire, I keep receipts from buying a pack of gum. Your mother used to say I was preparing to audit heaven.”
My throat tightened. Mom had been gone for four years. Some days it still surprised me how a sentence could carry her into a room.
“Can you photograph it and send it?”
“Of course. But I want you to tell me what's happening.”
So I did. Not every frightening thought. Just the truth: Vanessa had hurt me, a baby needed help, and someone had put my name on a lie.
“I raised you to speak up,” he said quietly. “I never raised you to get hurt for doing it. I'm proud of you, and I'm angry that nobody stopped her sooner.”
That distinction stayed with me.
An hour later, my father sent the restaurant receipt. His careful handwriting on the back read, CLAIRE DROVE ME. I had not realized he made notes like that. He explained that memory had frightened him since his illness, so he wrote ordinary days down.
His habit gave me an alibi.
In the early afternoon, Sofia called from outside the courthouse. I could hear buses passing and Ella fussing in the background.
“The judge wouldn't let them take her,” Sofia said. “Not today.”
I exhaled so hard my chest hurt.
“What happened?”
“Luca's attorney challenged the documents. Mine brought Ella's medical records, my job schedule, and the letters. The court set another hearing for next week and asked for the originals. I still have to be careful, Claire. This isn't over.”
“Are you safe?”
“I'm staying with my aunt, and there's a patrol officer keeping an eye on the building. Luca offered his mansion. I said no.”
“Good,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Sofia laughed once. “I'm glad someone agrees.”
“It's not that I think he wants to hurt you. I just think everyone deserves a place where they can close the door themselves.”
“So do I.”
She fell silent, then said, “He asked to see Ella for half an hour in the courthouse family room. I stayed. He didn't try to take her. He just sat on the rug and let her chew his tie.”
I pictured Luca Moretti, the man whose name could empty a crowded restaurant, sitting on a courthouse rug with a baby eating a silk tie. The image was almost impossible to reconcile with the man who had fired three armed guards for arriving late to a meeting.
“She liked him,” Sofia said reluctantly. “That surprised me.”
“Babies have terrible taste in ties.”
Her laughter warmed the sterile room.
Before we hung up, Sofia told me she and Luca had finally compared their letters. She had written to him at least twice a month. He had received none. Meanwhile, she had received six messages supposedly from him, including one offering money on the condition that she leave Chicago with the baby.
“Did the messages have his signature?” I asked.
“Yes. But he swears he never wrote them.”
“Are you sure about him?”
“Not sure. But he showed me his outgoing email archive and asked his lawyer to preserve it. That's more than anyone did before yesterday.”
I spent the afternoon imagining the unseen hands through which those letters had passed: the mailroom attendant, the receptionist, the person who sorted envelopes on Luca's desk. Six months was a long time to keep two people separated by a lie. It required practice. It required access. It required someone who saw every letter as a problem to be solved.
At five, Luca came to visit with an arrangement of yellow tulips. I was sitting upright, trying to untangle my hair with a cheap hospital comb.
“You don't have to bring flowers,” I said.
“I know.” He set them down. “I didn't know what else to bring without making this about money.”
That honesty disarmed me more than any expensive gift could have.
“Did Sofia let you hold Ella?”
“Twice. She cried the second time.”
“Ella?”
“Me.”
He said it without a trace of embarrassment.
We sat quietly for a moment. Then he asked, “Why did you help them?”
“Because I saw a woman begging to speak to the father of her child, and because Vanessa was trying to make the baby disappear.”
“You could have walked away.”
“I could have,” I agreed. “I wish you knew how much that frightened me.”
He studied the bandages below my hospital blanket. “I'm beginning to.”
I hesitated before asking the question that had followed me since the dinner.
“Mr. Moretti, did your staff ever tell you about the women who came asking for help?”
His expression darkened. “I believed they told me everything important.”
“Then someone decided who counted as important.”
He did not defend himself. He looked at the tulips, and then back at me.
“I gave Vanessa access to my home, my correspondence, my security team,” he said. “I thought trusting her made us partners. I didn't notice she was removing the people who might contradict her.”
“Now you notice.”
“Yes. Too late for you to leave here without stitches.”
He stood to go. At the door, he turned back.
“There's one more thing. Marco found a copy of your employee verification code printed on a visitor credential.”
“For whom?”
“An attorney named Thomas Greer. He represented Vanessa's father's investment firm.”
“Why would a lawyer need my employee code?”
“He wouldn't.” Luca's voice grew quiet. “Unless he was preparing to make you a witness who couldn't deny being there.”
My father had kept one restaurant receipt. Someone at the mansion had kept every piece of information needed to invent another person's life.
When Luca left, I called Mara Keene's office and asked them to preserve the visitor credential.
May you like
I had a terrible feeling that my signature was only one of many things Thomas Greer had borrowed without asking.
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