Chapter 19 - THE WOMAN IN THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH|
The Italian clinic had closed years earlier, but its former administrator was still alive. Through lawyers and official requests, Elena obtained permission to review archived admission records.
The document could not immediately establish that Maria had been a patient. Its signature appeared genuine, but the clinic's records had suffered water damage, and several pages were missing.
Sarah refused to build her hopes around one uncertain document.
"Hope isn't proof," she told Stefan.
"No," he agreed. "But it is a reason to keep looking."
The clinic's former administrator remembered a woman who had arrived under the name Maria Bennett. She had been seriously ill and accompanied by another woman who paid the medical bills in cash.
"Did she have a child with her?" Sarah asked.
"No. She carried a photograph of a little girl."
The administrator described the photograph: a child with dark curls, green eyes, and a small birthmark near her left wrist.
Sarah had the same birthmark.
"Did Maria leave the clinic?"
"Yes. She recovered enough to travel. I don't know where she went."
The administrator found an old visitor log containing a name that had been partially erased.
Katherine Vale.
Katarina had visited Maria in Italy after disappearing from the Volkov family.
When Sarah confronted her, Katarina admitted that she had helped Maria escape once more, after learning that the people who had altered the original records were still monitoring her.
"Why didn't you tell me she might have survived?"
"I thought she died afterward. I received a message saying she had passed away. I believed it."
"Who sent it?"
"Daniel's office."
Sarah closed her eyes.
Another lie. Another person who had accepted a convenient explanation because the truth seemed impossible.
Katarina handed over a final letter from Maria, written shortly before the clinic closed.
Sarah, my brave little girl, if I never see you again, I need you to know that leaving you was the hardest decision I ever made. I believed you would be safer without me. I was wrong about many things, but never about loving you.
The letter included a location near Florence and a date from twelve years earlier.
Elena traced the address to a former artist's residence now operating as a small retirement community. A staff member remembered a woman who painted landscapes and refused to discuss her family.
The woman had left two years earlier.
Her forwarding address was unavailable, but she had donated several paintings to a local charity.
One painting depicted a New York ballroom filled with white lilies.
On its reverse was a message:
To the daughter I could not raise: the truth is closer than you think. Look where the first promise was made.
Sarah remembered the Brooklyn coffee shop where she had met Richard, but that promise had nothing to do with Maria.
Then Stefan examined the painting's date.
It had been created in the same year Maria disappeared.
He looked at Sarah.
"The first promise wasn't yours."
May you like
He reached for an old photograph of himself and Maria beside the river in Florence.
"It was ours."
