Chapter 4 - What My Mother Never Told Me
I drove to my mother's assisted-living center with Matteo and Gabriel following at a distance. I had insisted on taking my own car. After eleven months working inside the Romano estate, I needed one thing that still belonged entirely to me: the freedom to leave.
My mother was sitting beside the window when I arrived. Her name was Margaret Walsh. Before her stroke she had worked as a hospital records administrator, the person doctors called when a chart went missing or an insurance company demanded paperwork no one else could locate. She loved crossword puzzles and terrible detective shows. She also hated secrets.
Or so I had thought.
“Tell me about Rebecca,” I said.
Mom folded the blanket across her knees. “I should have told you years ago.”
I pulled up a chair. “Then tell me now.”
She took a breath. Her words came slowly, but she never asked me to finish them for her. I waited.
Rebecca had worked with her at a private medical clinic near the harbor. One afternoon, a man arrived with a cash payment and demanded that a patient's medication history be altered. Rebecca refused. Two days later, someone broke into her apartment. She went to the police, but the complaint went nowhere.
“Who was the patient?” I asked.
“An elderly businessman. Connected to the waterfront properties.”
“Was his name Romano?”
Mom shook her head. “Cross.”
I felt the room tilt.
“Julian?”
“His father. Arthur Cross.”
According to Mom, Arthur had died after a sudden cardiac event, and Rebecca believed his medical file had been manipulated to conceal the circumstances. Mom had copied the original records before the changes were made. A month later, she suffered her own stroke. The doctors found an ordinary vascular explanation; she had high blood pressure and several risk factors. But afterward, she received anonymous threats telling her to forget the files.
“Why didn't you tell the police about the threats?”
“I did. They couldn't trace them.” She looked down at her hands. “I didn't want you to spend your life afraid.”
I thought of every night I had worked two jobs to pay for her care, every time she had smiled and said she was lucky to have me. I had believed our life was hard because illness was cruel. Now I wondered how much of our hardship had been shaped by other people's choices.
“Where are the records?”
Mom's eyes filled. “Rebecca took them. She said she'd keep them safe.”
“Then why did you say not to trust her?”
“Because she stopped answering. And the last time she called, she told me she had made a deal.”
I sat with that for a moment. Rebecca could have been coerced. She could have betrayed us. Both possibilities frightened me.
When I left the room, Matteo was waiting in the common lounge, speaking with the center director. He had arranged for an independent security firm to patrol the parking lot, but only after the director approved it. He had also asked whether the center had a procedure for restricting visitors.
“You didn't have to do all this,” I said.
“Someone contacted your mother's facility because of what happened in my home.”
“That doesn't make you responsible for everything.”
“No,” he said. “But it makes me responsible for what I do next.”
We walked outside beneath a sky the color of wet cement. I told him what Mom had said. His expression changed when I mentioned Arthur Cross.
“I remember him,” Matteo said. “He was my grandfather's partner before the waterfront expansion. He died when I was in college.”
“Did your family own the clinic?”
“Not directly. One of our investment companies financed it.”
There it was again: the Romano name, stretching into places I had never imagined. Matteo saw the question on my face.
“My family has done things I'm not proud of,” he said. “Some were criminal. I won't insult you by pretending otherwise.”
“Are you still doing them?”
He held my gaze. “I've spent six years trying to dismantle that part of the business. I haven't succeeded everywhere.”
It was not a reassuring answer. It was, however, an honest one.
That evening, Nora called. The laboratory had agreed to evaluate the preserved tea sachet, but testing could take time and might not reveal what, if anything, had been added to the tea. Police were also seeking a warrant for Julian's office records.
“There's something else,” she said. “Teresa's old notebooks mention a private investigator. His name was Daniel Price.”
“Can we contact him?”
“We tried. His office has been closed for three weeks.”
“Where is he?”
“We don't know.”
After the call, I returned to Teresa's hospital room. She was awake, watching a baseball game with the sound turned low. I placed the alphabet board on her blanket and told her what Mom had said.
At Rebecca's name, Teresa's eyes widened.
She spelled two words.
NOT ENEMY.
“Rebecca isn't the enemy?”
Teresa nodded.
Then she began another message, slowly and carefully.
SHE HAS THE ORIGINAL.
“The original what?” I asked.
Teresa pointed to the word TRUST printed on a folder beside her bed.
May you like
Before I could ask another question, my phone vibrated with a message from an unknown number.
STOP LOOKING FOR REBECCA. IF YOU WANT HER ALIVE, COME ALONE.
