Chapter 4 - THE MAN IN THE RED CAR
The recording began with a hospital monitor beeping in the background.
Detective Ortiz later described it to me in a small interview room at the station. Claire's voice was weak and hoarse, as if she'd been crying for hours. Somewhere nearby, a newborn made the soft, indignant sounds of a child who didn't care that adults were destroying her world.
Then a man said, "Tell Enzo the baby didn't survive."
Dominic Caruso.
Claire answered, "He'll come here. He'll want to see her."
"Then leave before he does. I have a driver waiting."
"You promised you wouldn't hurt her."
"I promised she'd live if you followed instructions. Don't confuse that with kindness."
The recording ended with footsteps and the sound of Claire whispering, "I'm sorry, little moon."
I thought of the embroidered moon on the pink blanket and felt a terrible ache behind my ribs.
Enzo heard the recording in full with Ortiz and Sloan. According to Marco, he sat without moving long after it ended. Then he asked to hear the baby's sounds again. Not Dominic's threat. Not his own name. Just the few seconds of a tiny voice he had never been allowed to know.
"Does that mean Dominic ordered the kidnapping?" I asked Ortiz.
"It indicates coercion and gives us evidence to investigate," she said. "We still need to establish what happened to Claire after she left, how the false death records were created, and who threatened Mia recently."
"Enzo wants him arrested."
"Mr. Caruso isn't the arresting authority."
"I know. I'm glad somebody keeps reminding him."
Ortiz almost smiled.
Two days after Mia's rescue, the girl was staying with June in a protected location. A family court had issued temporary orders restricting contact with Serena, Dominic, and several associates. Enzo had requested visits, but he would begin with a supervised meeting guided by a child therapist.
Meanwhile, Serena was facing charges related to my assault and the unlawful confinement of Mia. She'd hired three lawyers and released a statement through a publicist claiming that she'd acted to protect the child from organized crime. The statement didn't mention my bleeding arm or the locked farmhouse bedroom.
I watched a clip of it on Sophie's laptop before snapping the screen shut.
"You're going to break it," Sophie protested.
"Better the laptop than my patience."
Dad looked up from his soup. "Let other people handle the lies."
He was right. But other people weren't the ones whose faces kept appearing on evening news reports. Mine had been photographed outside the hospital. Someone called me "the maid who saved the heiress," as if Mia were a bank account instead of a little girl who wanted her guardian.
Another site called me an opportunist. It claimed I had planted the envelope to make money from the Carusos.
I shut off the phone.
"We can talk to a lawyer," Sophie said.
"I already have a victim advocate."
"Then use her."
At seventeen, she could make concern sound like an order.
Later that day, Enzo came to the apartment building to ask for permission to speak. He didn't arrive with a line of armed guards or a stack of checks. Marco stayed downstairs. Enzo wore a dark sweater and carried a bakery bag containing cinnamon rolls.
I met him in the common room because Dad needed his rest and because I wanted the option of leaving.
"You didn't have to bring food," I said.
"Mrs. Donnelly told me you missed breakfast."
"Mrs. Donnelly tells everyone everything."
"Only the people she believes will listen."
I took a roll. It was still warm.
Up close, Enzo looked different from the man who had sat at the engagement table. He was still handsome, still broad-shouldered and controlled, but his eyes were bloodshot. There was a small cut along his jaw where he'd evidently shaved without paying attention.
"How's Mia?" I asked.
He smiled, barely. "She says my hair looks like a television detective's. Apparently that isn't a compliment."
I laughed before I could stop myself.
"She met you?"
"Yesterday. Fifteen minutes. June and the therapist were there. I brought a book about planets. She asked if I knew the names of all the moons. I said no, and she told me I'd better learn before next time."
I pictured the girl correcting him and felt something loosen inside me.
"How did it end?"
"She gave me a picture of a red car and asked whether I'd ever owned one."
"And?"
"I told her the truth. I had a red car when I was twenty-three. I sold it before she was born. I don't know whose car followed Claire."
He looked at his hands.
"I wanted to tell her a thousand things. That I would have come if I'd known. That I'd searched every hospital record until my lawyers said there was nothing else to find. That I kept the blanket because it smelled like baby soap for years. But none of that answers the question she's really asking."
"Which is?"
"Whether I'm safe."
I nodded. "She gets to decide that slowly."
He glanced up. "You're very good at saying things I don't want to hear."
"It's free."
For a moment, we both smiled.
Then I asked the question I had been avoiding.
"What exactly do you do, Enzo?"
His face closed slightly. "You worked at my house. You know the reputation."
"I know what newspapers say. I know what you let people believe. And I know your daughter has reason to fear men connected to your business."
He stared through the window at the wet courtyard.
"My father started with freight warehouses. Some of his money came from crimes I was too young to understand. I inherited businesses that are legitimate on paper and others that have never been clean. For years I told myself I could keep the ugly parts away from the people I loved."
"How's that working?"
He didn't look offended.
"Terribly."
"Then do something different. Not because I say so. Because Mia deserves an answer beyond 'trust me.'"
"I have started cooperating with an investigation into Dominic's operations. Sloan is helping me separate what can be lawfully preserved from what needs to be disclosed."
"That sounds expensive."
"It will be."
"So was the lie that stole six years from you."
He nodded once.
Before he left, he placed an envelope on the table. My body tensed automatically.
"What is it?"
"An itemized reimbursement proposal for your medical bills and lost wages. No confidentiality agreement. No demand that you work for me again. You can take it to any lawyer you choose, or you can decline it."
I examined the pages. It was more careful than I expected.
"Thank you," I said. "I'll show my advocate."
He stood. "That's exactly what you should do."
I watched him walk toward the door, trying not to notice that I felt safer when he listened than when he promised anything.
When I returned to the apartment, Dad was sitting at the table with a yellow legal pad. Across the top he had written THREE THINGS WE CAN CONTROL. Underneath were the words MEALS, MEDICINE, and TELLING THE TRUTH. His writing leaned awkwardly toward the margin. Before the stroke, he'd been the sort of man who repaired a broken stair before anyone mentioned it. Now making a list required patience, and I could see how much he resented needing that patience.
"That's a pretty good list," I said.
He tapped the fourth line, still blank, then handed me the pen.
I wrote ASKING FOR HELP.
He smiled. Sophie came into the kitchen, saw the page, and added LOCKING THE DOOR without waiting to be invited. Then we all laughed, a little too loudly, because for once the three of us were making a plan instead of pretending nothing was wrong. I kept that piece of paper in my bag for months.
The following morning, a letter arrived for Dad.
It was printed on expensive cream paper. The return address belonged to a real estate firm that had recently purchased several properties on our block, including the building where Dad rented a small ground-floor apartment before the stroke. The letter announced a dispute over the family home's mortgage servicing and demanded immediate verification of ownership documents.
Dad's hand shook as he read it.
"That's not right," he said. "We never missed a payment."
Our house wasn't large. The porch sagged and the kitchen faucet dripped, but Dad had paid that mortgage for twenty-one years. Serena had promised she could make him lose it. Now somebody was trying.
My advocate contacted the bank and found an irregular request for information made by a law office associated with Adrian Bell. Nothing had yet changed legally. That didn't make the threat less real.
I phoned Ortiz and reported it.
"Keep the letter," she said. "Don't contact the sender. We'll trace it."
"Do you think Serena ordered this?"
"We don't know."
Two hours later, Sophie returned from school early, pale and furious. She placed a bright yellow paper bird on the kitchen table.
"A man left this on my locker," she said.
It looked exactly like the birds Mia had folded. But the message on its wing was written in an adult's precise block letters.
THE WRONG GIRL WAS SAVED.
A second line was folded inside the bird.
Tell Ruby to look at her sister before she looks for another man's daughter.
I felt the apartment tilt around me.
Sophie straightened her shoulders. "We're not going to panic, right?"
May you like
I pulled her into my good arm.
"No," I said, though I was terrified. "We're going to tell the police. And this time, we're going to tell them everything."
