Chapter 8 - The Child in the Yellow Raincoat
Nora identified the raincoat the next morning.
She recognized a crooked stitch beneath the collar, where she had repaired a tear after Lily caught it on a playground fence. Kim photographed the repair and logged Nora's statement. Then Nora sat in the interview room with the coat across her knees and asked whether she could take it home.
“Not yet,” Kim said. “It's evidence.”
Nora nodded as though she understood, but she held the fabric for another minute before letting go.
I waited outside. When she came through the door, she walked straight into my arms. Her grief was not loud. It was a shaking that seemed to start somewhere deep inside her bones.
“She's real,” Nora whispered. “I know that sounds strange. But sometimes after enough years, you start wondering whether you imagined every good day.”
“You didn't imagine her.”
“I know.” She pulled away. “And I want her found. Even if she doesn't remember me.”
The police had discovered that the clinic's transfer codes matched payments to a network of shell companies. Some of the companies had purchased medical equipment; others had paid for transportation and temporary housing. The records suggested a system designed to hide where children went, but they did not yet reveal who had authorized each transfer or whether every child had survived.
Anthony explained this in the library while rain tapped the windows. I listened with a blanket around my shoulders, trying to ignore a dull ache in my back.
“Could Richard have done all of it?” I asked.
“He could have funded parts of it,” Anthony said. “But financing is different from running it. The investigators are looking for the people who controlled the records.”
“And Bianca?”
“We know she concealed your marriage and intercepted documents. We don't yet know how much she understood about the clinic.”
I wanted to hate Bianca cleanly, without questions. She had held a knife near my wedding ring and humiliated me in front of sixty people. But hating her did not make the evidence simpler.
Leonardo entered with a tray of tea and stopped when he saw me wince.
“Emma?”
“I'm fine.”
“You've said that three times today.”
“Because three people have asked.”
His mouth twitched, but he did not smile. “Will you call your obstetrician?”
I stared at him. “Not that clinic.”
“An independent hospital. Your choice.”
I agreed. The doctor confirmed that the baby was doing well but warned me to rest and return immediately if the pain became regular or severe. I heard the words, but what stayed with me was the sound of my baby's heartbeat. Fast. Steady. Alive.
On the way home I asked Leonardo to drive past the little restaurant where Matteo and I had met. The windows were dark. A FOR LEASE sign hung crookedly above the door.
“He came in during a snowstorm,” I told Leonardo. “He ordered lemon cake after the kitchen closed.”
“He always believed rules were suggestions.”
“He was kind.”
Leonardo gripped the steering wheel. “He was. I used to mistake that for weakness.”
I turned toward him. “Did you two fight before he died?”
He took a long breath. “We disagreed about the family business. He wanted me to make certain operations legitimate. I told him he didn't understand what it would cost.”
“Was he right?”
“Yes.” The answer surprised me. “And now I have to live with how long it took me to say it.”
That evening, Kim called. The hard drive from the storage unit had been encrypted, but technicians recovered a short video. It showed a corridor at the clinic on March ninth. A nurse walked past the camera carrying a child wrapped in a yellow raincoat. The child's face was hidden. A second figure followed, wearing a badge that had been turned backward.
The video did not prove it was Lily. But the nurse's face was visible.
I recognized her from my prenatal visits: Dr. Evelyn Hart's longtime assistant, Marissa Bell.
Kim had already requested an interview. Marissa was gone. Her apartment had been cleared, and her phone had been disconnected.
Then a call came through to the detective's office. A woman claimed to be Marissa. She said she would surrender if they guaranteed her safety.
May you like
Before hanging up, she made one request.
“Tell Emma Collins that Matteo Moretti saved my son.”
