Chapter 4 - The Empty Coffin|
I hadn't planned on spending my Thursday morning inside a lawyer's office discussing whether my mother had actually died.
But life apparently had other ideas.
I sat across from Iris Shaw in a quiet conference room overlooking Madison Avenue.
She was a woman in her early fifties with silver-streaked hair, sharp blue eyes, and the unmistakable expression of someone who didn't tolerate foolishness.
Luca sat beside me.
Leo was at home with his aunt, Gianna.
I had insisted on meeting Iris somewhere neutral.
Luca hadn't argued.
That concerned me almost as much as everything else.
Iris placed a folder on the table.
"Before we begin, Miss Bennett, I need you to understand something."
I folded my arms.
"I'm discovering that people enjoy beginning conversations with that sentence."
A faint smile touched her mouth.
"Then I'll be direct."
She opened the folder.
"Your mother's official cause of death was cardiac arrest following complications from pneumonia."
"I know."
"She was admitted to St. Catherine's Hospital on February eighteenth."
"Yes."
"She was pronounced dead four days later."
I nodded.
"I visited her the night before."
I remembered that visit with painful clarity.
My mother had been pale and exhausted, but she'd squeezed my hand.
She had told me she loved me.
Then she'd asked me to promise something strange.
Never let anybody convince you that kindness makes you weak.
I'd thought she was being sentimental.
Now I wondered whether she'd been saying goodbye.
Iris pushed a document toward me.
"According to the hospital's archived records, your mother was transferred out of St. Catherine's at eleven forty-three that night."
I stopped breathing.
"What?"
"The transfer authorization is missing."
"Where was she taken?"
"That's what Sofia was investigating."
I stared at the document.
My mother's name appeared in black letters beside a discharge time.
A discharge time.
Not a time of death.
"But I went to her funeral."
"I know."
"I saw her coffin."
Iris's expression softened.
"It was closed."
I looked at Luca.
He didn't move.
A horrible memory surfaced.
The funeral director telling me it was better not to see her after the illness.
The cheap flowers.
The rain.
The distant relatives who barely knew me.
The terrible silence as the coffin disappeared into the ground.
I had spent seven years believing my mother was beneath that earth.
"You're saying she wasn't inside."
Iris hesitated.
"I'm saying we have no verified evidence that she was."
The room blurred.
I pressed my hands together beneath the table.
I refused to cry.
Not yet.
Not in front of strangers.
"Why would she leave me?"
Nobody answered.
That hurt more than I expected.
I looked at Iris.
"Was she afraid of someone?"
"Very likely."
"Who?"
Iris glanced at Luca.
He spoke before she could.
"My uncle Vincent controlled the Moretti Foundation's major charitable partnerships during that period."
"The same foundation connected to North Star?"
"Yes."
I remembered the name on his phone.
"Why did he call you last night?"
Luca's jaw tightened.
"Someone told him I'd met you."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"Does he know about my mother?"
"He's asked questions about Elena for years."
I stared at him.
"And you didn't think that was important to mention?"
"I wanted to confirm what I knew before frightening you further."
I pushed back my chair.
"That wasn't your decision."
He didn't argue.
Again.
I was beginning to understand that Luca Moretti's silence could mean several different things.
Sometimes he was angry.
Sometimes he was calculating.
And sometimes, I suspected, he knew I'd caught him doing something wrong.
Iris slid another document toward me.
It was a photocopy of an old hospital security log.
One entry had been highlighted.
AUTHORIZED VISITOR: V. MORETTI.
My hands went cold.
"Vincent visited her?"
"On the evening before the recorded transfer," Iris said.
I looked at Luca.
His expression was stone.
"Did you know?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
His eyes held mine.
"Yes."
For reasons I couldn't explain, I believed that particular answer.
But belief wasn't trust.
Not yet.
Iris opened a second folder.
"Sofia found evidence that North Star funds were redirected through a series of construction companies."
"Money laundering?"
"That's one possibility."
"Another?"
"Someone was using charitable donations to conceal payments to individuals who were supposed to disappear from financial records."
I swallowed.
"Like my mother?"
Iris didn't answer directly.
Instead, she handed me a page covered with names and dates.
Most meant nothing to me.
Then I saw one I recognized.
MIRIAM BELL.
I stared.
"Miriam was my mother's nurse."
Iris leaned forward.
"You're certain?"
"She used to bring me hot chocolate during visiting hours."
I could almost see the woman's kind face.
"She told me my mother had died."
The room became very quiet.
Luca looked toward Iris.
"Where is she now?"
Iris typed something into her laptop.
"Retired, according to her licensing records."
"Address?"
She read it aloud.
I knew the neighborhood.
It was less than twenty minutes from my apartment.
I stood.
"I'm going to see her."
Luca rose immediately.
"Not alone."
"Don't start."
"Avery, someone broke into your apartment."
"And someone lied to me about my mother's death."
My voice broke.
"I spent seven years mourning a woman who might have been alive the entire time."
Luca's expression changed.
I hated the pity I thought I saw there.
Then I realized it wasn't pity.
It was recognition.
He understood what it meant to stand beside a grave and wish the person inside would come home.
"You're going," he said quietly.
"Yes."
"Then let me make sure you return."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"One condition."
"Name it."
"No secrets."
He hesitated.
That hesitation told me everything.
"All right," he finally said.
Iris stood beside the window.
"There's one more thing."
We both turned.
She held up a photograph.
It was taken outside St. Catherine's Hospital on the night my mother vanished.
A woman in a dark coat was being helped into the back of an ambulance.
Her face was partly obscured.
But the silver star hanging against her coat was unmistakable.
My mother's necklace.
I pressed my fingers to the pendant at my throat.
"How could she be wearing it?"
Iris met my eyes.
"That's exactly what Sofia wanted to know."
Then she turned the photograph over.
On the back was a handwritten message.
The second star stays with the daughter.
I looked at Luca.
"Second?"
May you like
His expression darkened.
And suddenly I understood that the necklace my mother had left me might contain far more than a memory.
