Chương 4
“We don’t have public events,” Amelia said.
“There are three people outside taking pictures.”
“They are standing on the sidewalk.”
“Just keep it calm.”
Amelia looked through the front window. A teenage girl pressed her face near the glass while her friend filmed. When Amelia met their eyes, they ran away laughing.
Calm, she thought, was often the word people used when they wanted someone else to absorb the cost of their fear.
At one, a delivery driver brought flowers from people she had never met. At two, a customer canceled a fitting because she did not want to “get mixed up in anything.” At three, a bride who had delayed paying for six weeks arrived with the full balance in cash and hugged Amelia so hard that her cheek struck the woman’s shoulder.
By four, an online fundraiser had been created in Amelia’s name.
She had not authorized it.
The organizer described Brooks Alterations as “a struggling minority-owned business,” though Amelia was white, and claimed she supported three children, though she had none. The fundraiser had raised eighteen thousand dollars.
Tasha read the description twice.
“Maybe they mean me,” she said. “I’m a minority, and my mother says I act like three children.”
Amelia laughed, then pressed her palm against her cheek.
The humor did not solve anything. It made the afternoon survivable.
Adrian called at five.
She recognized the number from the card and let it ring.
He called again.
Tasha lifted one eyebrow.
“You answer,” Amelia said.
“It’s your mafia prince.”
“He is thirty-eight and has a real-estate portfolio.”
“You searched.”
“Against my better judgment.”
The Moretti family’s history filled decades of newspaper archives: illegal gambling allegations, labor-racketeering trials, acquittals, vanished witnesses, charitable donations, construction contracts, political friendships. Adrian himself had never been charged with a crime. He ran Moretti Urban Holdings, which owned hotels, apartment buildings, commercial properties, and, apparently, the building that housed the boutique on Oak Street.
He also chaired the Lucia Moretti Foundation, named for his sister, who had died at twenty-two after driving her car into a concrete barrier.
The articles disagreed on whether it had been an accident.
Amelia answered on the third call.
“What?”
A pause.
“Good evening to you too,” Adrian said.
“I’ve had a long day.”
“So have I.”
“Did six million people watch you get slapped?”
“No. They watched me threaten a tenant.”
“You did threaten her.”
“I asked a question.”
“You asked it like a man who already knew the answer.”
Another pause. “My mother wants to see you.”
“How is she?”
“Hairline fracture in her left wrist. Severe bruising in both. She is refusing pain medication because it makes her sleepy.”
“That sounds like her.”
“You have known her for eighteen hours.”
“It was an intense eighteen hours.”
He told Amelia that Isabella would be at a private dining room in a hotel the next afternoon. Amelia refused the private room. He suggested the hotel café. She refused the hotel. They settled on a small Italian bakery three blocks from her shop.
“Bring no security,” Amelia said.
“I don’t travel without security.”
“Then leave them outside.”
“They will object.”
“They can buy cookies.”
He exhaled, perhaps a laugh stripped of sound. “Three o’clock.”
The next afternoon, Isabella entered the bakery wearing a navy coat over the same cream cardigan. Her left wrist was braced. Adrian followed several steps behind her. Two black-suited men remained across the street with paper cups and expressions suggesting they had never before been instructed to guard anyone through a bakery window.
Isabella kissed Amelia on both cheeks, carefully avoiding the injured side.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“So do you.”
“Good. We can be honest.”
Adrian pulled out a chair for his mother. He sat only after she did. The server recognized him and became so nervous that she brought three menus, four glasses of water, and no silverware.
Isabella ordered coffee and a lemon cookie.
Adrian ordered nothing.
Amelia ordered a cannoli because refusing food in a bakery felt immoral.
For several minutes, they spoke about ordinary things. Isabella complained that the hospital had served tea with no flavor. Amelia explained that Tasha had banned her from the sewing machine for twenty-four hours. Adrian answered two messages and received a disapproving look from his mother.
“You invite someone and stare at your phone,” Isabella said.
“It is a work matter.”
“Everything is a work matter when you want to avoid a conversation.”
He placed the phone facedown.
Amelia liked Isabella more each time she embarrassed him.
Then Isabella removed a folded photograph from her purse.
Lucia Moretti stood in the center of it, laughing beside a birthday cake. She was young, dark-haired, and impatient with the camera. The gold bracelet circled her wrist.
“The blue stone was from my mother’s ring,” Isabella said. “Lucia had it set into the clasp after the bracelet broke. She said diamonds looked like they were trying too hard.”
Adrian stared at the photograph.
“You never told me you saw the listing,” he said.
“I did not tell you many things.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“And you went there alone?”
“I am eighty-one, not eight.”
“You were injured.”
“Because a badly raised woman and two guards behaved like animals. Not because I crossed a street without permission.”
The server arrived with the cannoli and no coffee. Isabella waited until she left.
“The bracelet was donated after Lucia died,” she said. “It was meant for the foundation auction.”
Adrian’s voice changed. “It was sold.”
“That is what the records say.”
“To whom?”
“An anonymous bidder.”
“Then it could have reached the boutique legitimately.”
Isabella looked at him for a long moment. “You do not believe that.”
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table.
Amelia broke off one end of the cannoli and immediately regretted the loud crack of the shell.
May you like
“Why not call the boutique?” she asked Isabella.
“I did. A young woman said the bracelet came from a private estate. When I gave my name, she put me on hold. Vanessa came to the phone and said the listing had been removed.”
