Chapter 2 - THE GIRL AT THE WINDOW
There are kinds of fear that make you scream.
And there are kinds that leave you perfectly quiet.
When I saw the picture of Lily sleeping on Teresa's couch, I stopped being able to hear the ambulance siren. The paramedic was asking me something about my pain, but his voice sounded like it was traveling through water.
“Ms. Mendes, who took that picture?”
“I don't know.”
“Can I see the message?”
I turned the screen toward him. He read it, then asked the driver to contact dispatch and report a threat against a child. He spoke with the brisk steadiness of someone who understood that panic would only waste time.
“Your daughter's address?” he asked.
I gave it to him. I gave Teresa's name and the color of her front door and the number of steps to the apartment. I described Lily's stuffed elephant, as if a toy might help somebody find her if it came to that.
“You've done the right thing,” he said. “Now let us make the calls.”
At the hospital, a nurse named Angela cleaned the slash across my back and called a doctor to examine it. I needed stitches. My ankle was badly sprained but not broken. The doctor was careful when he explained that injuries to the back could become infected and that I would need several weeks before lifting heavy objects again. I nodded without really listening. All I could think about was Lily behind a window.
Then Detective Valdez called.
“Officers reached Teresa's building,” she said. “Your daughter and your neighbor are safe. They've moved them to a secure location while we determine who took the photograph.”
I covered my eyes with my good hand.
“Can I hear her?”
A pause. Then I heard a small voice over a speakerphone.
“Mommy? Teresa says we're having an adventure.”
“That's right, baby.” My voice cracked. “I'm at the doctor. You stay with Teresa and listen carefully, okay?”
“Did you fall down?”
“A little. I'm getting better.”
“Can we have pancakes when you come?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “As many as you want.”
The officer took back the phone. I pressed it against my chest after the call ended. I didn't know whether I wanted to thank the world for letting me hear her or rage at it for making me afraid I wouldn't.
Near midnight, Alessandro arrived at the hospital in a dark overcoat, accompanied by Marco and a driver. He waited until Angela said he could enter. I was sitting up in a narrow bed, my back stitched and dressed, a bag of ice against my ankle. Without the enormous ballroom around him, Alessandro looked tired. His dark hair had come loose at the temples, and there was a fine tremor in his left hand as he settled his wheelchair beside the bed.
“Valdez told me about the photograph,” he said.
I nodded. “I don't want my daughter used against anyone.”
“She isn't a bargaining chip. Police have her protected.”
“And what if the police leave?”
He didn't promise something impossible. He thought for a moment.
“I'll help you find a safe place to stay,” he said. “With Lily, and with independent security if you agree. Your wages continue while you recover. None of that depends on your testimony.”
I studied his face. “Your wife threatened her.”
His jaw tightened. “I heard what she said. We have to prove who sent the picture. Isabella denies having any part in it.”
“What did you do with her?”
“She left the estate with her attorney. She isn't welcome there. My lawyer is looking into legal separation and whether the marriage can be annulled. That isn't going to happen with one angry phone call.”
His honesty surprised me.
I watched the rain streak down the window behind him. “Why did you marry her?”
He stared at his hands. “I thought she was helping me live the life I had left.”
“You still have a life.”
He looked up.
I immediately felt I'd overstepped. “I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean—”
“Don't apologize.” His voice was rough. “It's just that people have been talking about me as though my life ended at the guardrail. Some days I believe them.”
I knew what he meant, in a different way. Since Lily was born, people had talked about my life as though my choices belonged to her alone. I loved my daughter more than the air I breathed, but I remained a person too. I thought of Alessandro surrounded by attendants, lawyers, and advisers who spoke around his chair rather than to him.
“Being helped isn't the same as being owned,” I said.
He was silent for a long time.
Then he told me what the detectives had learned. David Collins's car remained at the estate, but the photographer had been recorded entering a service elevator at 2:17 that afternoon. The camera inside the elevator had failed for eleven minutes. During that interval, a contractor's van departed through the west gate using a visitor credential issued to a company called Westbury Events.
“Was that Vincent's company?” I asked.
“Not directly. But it was paid by one of his subsidiaries two days ago.”
“So David was taken?”
“We don't know,” Alessandro said. “The van could have carried equipment. Valdez doesn't want us jumping ahead of evidence.”
He pulled a slim notebook from his coat. It was old, with a bent corner and handwriting on the cover.
“This was my driver's,” he said. “Stefano Vale. He survived the crash. I haven't spoken with him in months.”
“Why?”
“He resigned after my rehabilitation began. Isabella said he couldn't face me.”
I opened the notebook. It contained fuel receipts and reminders, the ordinary lists of a man who liked everything in place. On one page, three days before the accident, Stefano had written: FRONT BRAKES — ASK MARCO WHY NEW GARAGE. Below that was a phone number with no name.
“Did you see this before?” I asked.
“No. Marco found it when he checked the old vehicle files tonight.”
I traced the ink without touching it. “You should give it to the detectives.”
“Already photographed. The original goes to Valdez in the morning.”
I glanced toward the notebook again. “Was Stefano blamed for the crash?”
“The investigators called it an accident on a wet road. He said the pedal went soft. The car struck the barrier before he could regain control.”
Alessandro looked toward the darkness outside. “I blamed him anyway.”
“Maybe that's why he couldn't face you,” I said.
He made a small, bitter sound. “Or why I couldn't face him.”
After Alessandro left, Mrs. Alvarez arrived with clean clothes and Lily's favorite knitted blanket. She'd retrieved it from my locker. She sat beside my bed and told me about the first day she'd met me, when I'd insisted on carrying three baskets of laundry at once and dropped one on her foot.
“I decided you were either determined or ridiculous,” she said.
“Both,” I admitted.
“Both,” she agreed.
She helped me change. When the fabric touched the dressing on my back, I winced.
“Did Isabella push you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I should have reported her after she screamed at the gardeners last month. I kept thinking it wasn't my place.”
“It's not your fault she hurt me.”
“Maybe not. But I won't confuse keeping the peace with doing the right thing again.”
By morning, the photographs from the anonymous number had been preserved. Police believed the picture had been taken before Lily was moved to safety. The number came from a disposable account that couldn't immediately be traced. Teresa was furious rather than frightened. She told the officer that whoever had stood outside her apartment had stepped on the basil planter she kept beneath the window.
“I planted that basil myself,” she told me later. “When this is over, someone owes me a new pot.”
It was the first time I'd laughed since the wedding.
At ten, Detective Valdez visited me with another officer, recorded my statement with my consent, and asked me to describe David's voice, the location of the portrait, and everything I'd heard Isabella say. She did not ask me to guess what was on the full recording. I appreciated that she was separating truth from fear, even when fear made every guess seem certain.
After the interview, she opened a folder.
“We located Stefano Vale,” she said. “He's living upstate with his brother.”
“Has he agreed to speak?”
“He said he would if Mr. Moretti came too.”
I looked at her. “Why him?”
“Because Stefano claims he warned Alessandro about the car before the accident and was ordered to drive it anyway.”
I felt cold. “Who ordered him?”
“That,” Valdez said, “is what we need to establish.”
She rose to leave, then stopped at the door.
“There's one more thing. We recovered a deleted draft email on David's work computer. It was addressed to Alessandro. The subject line was 'Do Not Trust the Accident Report.'”
“Did it have an attachment?”
“Yes. A photograph of the car taken after the crash. Someone had drawn a circle around a part of the wreck.”
“What part?”
Valdez's expression grew careful.
“The brake assembly. And under the photograph, David typed one sentence.”
She glanced at her notes.
“Ask why this piece was replaced before the investigators examined it.”
I looked at my injured hands, at the pale indent where my wedding-band-free fingers gripped the blanket, and wondered how many people had kept one dangerous piece of knowledge hidden.
David had hidden a card inside a portrait. Stefano had kept a notebook. I had kept silent until the axe was the only thing anyone would notice.
May you like
The terrible question wasn't just what had happened to Alessandro's car.
It was how many chances we'd had to tell the truth before anyone finally listened.
