Chương 3
Clara shook her head. “I don’t know you.”
“You know enough to insult me in front of half of Manhattan.”
“That doesn’t make getting into your car a good idea.”
A few people across the street laughed nervously, sensing a confrontation without hearing the words.
Ricardo looked toward the cameras. “You can ride with my sister.”
A woman in a long black coat stepped out of the second vehicle. Clara recognized her from the table: elegant, pale, perhaps thirty-five, with the same dark eyes as Ricardo and none of his visible menace.
“I’m Sarah Moretti,” she said. “There will be another woman in the car, and you can send the address and license plate to anyone you choose.”
“Sarah,” Dante warned.
“She’s right to ask.”
Clara looked at Leo.
He had stopped crying, but his small body shook with the effort of staying attached to her.
She should have handed him over. She knew this later, during every sleepless hour that followed. She should have tolerated the scream, walked back into the restaurant, and let the Moretti family carry its own grief home.
Instead, she took out her phone and photographed both license plates.
She sent them to Tom.
Her former husband responded before she could put the phone away.
Who are these people?
Clara typed, Long story. Call me in twenty minutes. If I don’t answer, call the police.
Tom sent back three dots, erased them, then wrote, Clara, do not get in that car.
She looked at Leo’s exhausted face.
I’ll answer, she wrote.
She climbed into Sarah’s vehicle.
The Moretti residence occupied the upper floors of a limestone building off Fifth Avenue. Clara had passed it dozens of times without knowing who lived above the bronze doors. Inside, the lobby smelled of beeswax, stone, and expensive flowers.
Security cameras followed them from the entrance to the private elevator.
Leo had fallen asleep again during the drive. He woke when the elevator rose and began searching Clara’s face as if checking whether she had disappeared.
“You’re still here,” she said.
His head dropped back against her.
Sarah stood beside them, hands folded over a small black clutch. “He hasn’t done that with anyone since Elena left.”
Clara looked at her.
Sarah’s gaze moved toward the elevator numbers.
“Elena is his mother?”
“Yes.”
“Ricardo said she left.”
“He says many things when he wants a conversation to end.”
“Is she alive?”
Sarah did not answer.
The elevator opened into a foyer larger than Clara’s apartment. Dark carved wood framed every doorway. The same amber light from the restaurant glowed here, softened by silk shades. Nothing was gaudy. The money was too old, or too well advised, to announce itself.
A housekeeper waited near the stairs.
Her eyes widened when she saw Clara carrying Leo.
“Mr. Moretti,” she said. “The doctor is on his way.”
“No doctor,” Clara said.
Everyone looked at her.
She felt heat rise under her collar.
“He’s asleep,” she added. “He doesn’t need another stranger touching him tonight.”
The housekeeper looked to Ricardo.
“No doctor,” he said.
Dante closed the elevator doors and remained in the foyer. “We need to discuss the exposure downstairs.”
“Later.”
“The restaurant footage is already online.”
“Later.”
Dante’s eyes moved to Clara. “This is part of it.”
Clara started toward the staircase.
Ricardo blocked her path without touching her. “His room is this way.”
He led her through a sitting room that looked untouched despite the late hour. On a long dining table stood three place settings.
One for Ricardo.
One with a child’s blue cup.
One beside an empty velvet chair.
The napkin at the empty place had been folded into a narrow fan.
Clara stopped.
Sarah saw where she was looking. “The staff sets it every night.”
“Why?”
No one answered.
Leo stirred and whispered, “Mama chair.”
Ricardo continued walking.
The child’s bedroom had cream walls, low shelves, and toys arranged with such precision that they did not look played with. A wooden train sat in a perfect oval. Books were organized by height. A small pair of pajamas lay folded at the foot of the bed.
Clara lowered Leo onto the mattress.
His eyes opened.
“No.”
“I’m right here.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. He caught her apron.
Ricardo stood in the doorway. Sarah remained behind him, while Dante took a position farther down the hall.
Clara loosened Leo’s shoes and pulled the blanket over his legs. “Does he have a night-light?”
The housekeeper reached for a lamp shaped like the moon.
Leo flinched when it came on.
“Off,” Clara said.
The housekeeper switched it off.
“Hall light,” Leo murmured.
Ricardo turned on the light in the corridor and left the bedroom door open. A narrow gold stripe fell across the carpet.
Leo stared at it. His breathing slowed.
Clara waited until his grip softened, then eased her sleeve from his hand.
His eyes opened again.
“Stay.”
The word reached into a place she had spent seventeen months boarding shut.
She saw Owen’s small fingers beneath a hospital blanket. She heard the oxygen machine pulse and remembered saying she would return after buying coffee, though she had not wanted coffee and had stood in the hallway for six minutes because she could not bear to watch another nurse adjust another tube.
When she came back, Tom had been crying.
Owen had still been alive, but Clara never forgave the six minutes.
She placed her hand over Leo’s.
“I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”
Ricardo moved into the room and sat in a low chair near the window.
Leo watched him through half-closed eyes.
No one spoke.
The apartment carried faint sounds around them: pipes settling, an elevator moving somewhere below, a guard murmuring into an earpiece. Clara counted Leo’s breaths until they grew deep and regular.
After nearly twenty minutes, his hand released hers.
She stood.
May you like
Ricardo rose with her.
In the corridor, he closed the door until only the narrow bar of light remained.
