My Mother’s Name
Chapter 07 - My Mother’s Name
My mother’s name had been Anna.
Anna Reed on every document I had ever seen. Anna Reed on her hospital bracelet when I was nine. Anna Reed in my father’s careful voice when grief made him gentler than silence.
But before she married him, she had been Anna Vale.
I had known that the way children know old furniture belongs to the room. It had never seemed important. Vale was a name from photographs, a name stitched inside a yellow baby blanket, a name on recipes written in blue ink.
In the Moretti kitchen at one in the morning, it became a key.
Luca repeated it. “Vale.”
Aldo looked stricken.
Mrs. Alvarez sat down slowly.
“What?” I asked.
No one answered quickly enough.
I turned to Luca. “What does that name mean?”
He ran one hand over his face. For the first time all night, his control looked like something he had to hold with both hands.
“Daniel Vale was my mother’s lawyer.”
“My grandfather?”
“Maybe.”
Aldo shook his head. “Not lawyer. Brother.”
The kitchen seemed to tilt.
“My mother had no brother,” Luca said.
“She did.” Aldo looked at him with apology. “Half-brother. Older. Born before your grandmother married Moretti. The family erased him when he refused their business.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“Are you saying my mother was related to Lucia Moretti?”
Aldo’s eyes were wet again. “Lucia tried to find Anna after Daniel died. Samuel helped. Then the Bellinis found out there might be another branch of the family with a claim to old trust holdings.”
I let out a small laugh because the alternative was falling apart.
“I’m a maid in this house.”
Mrs. Alvarez touched my good hand. “So was I, child. It does not mean you were born small.”
Luca looked at the cassette player as if hoping his mother would explain from beyond the static.
Instead, his phone buzzed with a message.
A video.
From Vanessa.
He opened it.
The screen showed the silver champagne bucket on a table I did not recognize. Behind it, windows reflected city lights. Vanessa’s manicured hand entered the frame and touched the rim.
Her voice was calm.
“You have until morning to stop asking questions. Announce that Emma lied because she wanted money. Send her away with enough cash to look guilty. Marry me next month as planned.”
Luca’s face became still.
The video continued.
“If you refuse, I open the base of the bucket and burn whatever your mother loved so much. Then I tell every old family in Chicago that Lucia Moretti hid assets from her own son and left them to a servant’s bloodline.”
The video ended.
No one spoke.
Then my phone rang.
My father’s nurse.
I answered with shaking fingers.
“Miss Reed?”
“Yes?”
“Your father is safe. But someone called the apartment phone. He became very agitated. He kept trying to say one word.”
“What word?”
The nurse hesitated.
“Church.”
Aldo stood so suddenly his chair scraped the tile.
“Saint Brigid’s,” he said.
Luca turned. “What?”
“The old church by the river. Lucia’s family stored documents in the crypt before the Morettis became too rich for saints.”
“Why would Vanessa go there?” I asked.
Aldo looked at the black screen of Luca’s phone.
“Because the bucket opens only in front of Lucia’s witness.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is if the witness is still alive.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
Aldo whispered a name.
“Father Benedict.”
Mrs. Alvarez crossed herself again.
“I thought he died years ago.”
“So did everyone,” Aldo said. “That was safer for him.”
Luca was already moving.
I followed.
He stopped in the service hall. “You are hurt.”
“And apparently related to half the secrets in your basement.”
His mouth almost moved toward a smile.
Almost.
Then his face changed as another message arrived.
Not a video this time.
A photograph.
It showed the silver bucket sitting before an altar, its base open just enough to reveal a folded packet of papers inside.
May you like
Under it Vanessa had typed six words.
Ask Emma why Lucia chose her.
