Chapter 5 - THE BABY WHO DISAPPEARED|
Nora read the note three times before she could speak.
“What baby?”
Isabella turned her face away.
“Nonna.”
“Please.”
“What baby?”
The old woman began to cry.
“I had a child before I came to America.”
Nora felt the room tilt.
“You had a child?”
“A daughter.”
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
The answer came out broken.
Isabella explained that she had become pregnant shortly before escaping Sicily. Her family had arranged for the baby to be placed with distant relatives while Isabella was confined in the family estate. She had planned to return after reaching America, but the people who promised to help her disappeared.
She received one letter months later.
The child was alive.
Then the letters stopped.
“I spent years searching,” Isabella whispered. “Every time I thought I had found her, someone told me the records had been lost.”
“Did Aurelio know?”
“He knew I was pregnant. He promised to help me. But by the time he reached the village, the baby was gone.”
Nora's eyes filled with tears.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I didn't want you to spend your life searching for a ghost.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Dante entered with Marcus behind him.
“I apologize for arriving without warning,” Dante said. “We found the source of the message.”
Nora stood.
“Then tell me who sent it.”
Dante looked at Isabella.
The old woman went pale.
“You,” she whispered.
Dante shook his head.
“Not me. The message was transmitted through a device registered to my father. But the device was used by someone else.”
“Who?”
“A man named Salvatore Greco. He worked for my grandfather and was declared dead in 1989.”
Isabella gripped Nora's hand.
“He is alive.”
Dante nodded.
“We believe so.”
He placed a document on the bedside table.
The document was an old adoption record. It listed a baby girl born in Sicily in 1975. The child's original name had been erased, but the adoptive parents were recorded as a couple who later emigrated to the United States.
Nora stared at the names.
They belonged to her great-aunt and great-uncle—the people who had raised her mother.
“Who is this child?” she asked.
Dante turned the page.
The name had been rewritten in American handwriting.
Catherine Bellamy.
Nora's mother.
She looked at Isabella.
“My mother was your daughter?”
Isabella nodded, tears running down her cheeks.
“I found out only after she died. I recognized her birthmark in a photograph, but I was too late.”
Nora sank into the chair.
Her mother had died when Nora was nine. She remembered a warm voice, a small gold bracelet, and a lullaby in the dialect she still spoke.
All this time, her grandmother had known the truth.
Before Nora could speak, Dante's phone rang.
He answered, listened, and went very still.
“What happened?” Nora demanded.
Dante lowered the phone.
“Your apartment has been broken into.”
“Was anything stolen?”
He looked at her.
“Only one thing.”
“What?”
May you like
Dante's voice dropped.
“Your mother's bracelet.”
