258. 🕯️ THE EMPTY CHAIR

Chapter 02 - His Mother's Handwriting

Luca did not touch the cream envelope at first.

He had spent twenty-two years keeping the things that belonged to his mother in a cedar cabinet upstairs. Her gloves. A broken watch. The little silver box she used for safety pins. He could summon the shape of her handwriting more easily than the sound of her laugh, a fact he had never admitted to anyone.

“Where did you get that?” he asked Father Thomas.

“It was left with me.”

“By whom?”

“By Lucia.”

Vanessa made a sound of impatience. “Luca, the man is confused. It's late.”

“He seems less confused than anyone else at this table.”

Carlo folded his arms. “An old letter can wait until morning.”

Father Thomas placed the envelope between the saltcellar and an untouched dessert spoon. “It has waited long enough.”

Mrs. Alvarez came in with fresh coffee. She poured without speaking, but her eyes lingered on the blue ink. Emma noticed that. There was a history in this house that the staff knew in pieces, like neighbors who had each heard a different part of an argument through the wall.

Luca opened the envelope with care. Inside was a single sheet of cream stationery. The handwriting was indeed his mother's, though slower and more uneven than he remembered.

*My darling Luca,* it began. *If Thomas has found a reason to give you this, then something has happened to the little house on Archer Avenue. I hope he has been mistaken. I hope you are reading this with no cause for alarm.*

Luca sat down.

He read the rest silently. The clock over the fireplace moved past eleven. At last he folded the letter and ran a finger along its edge.

“What is St. Agnes House?” he asked.

Emma felt herself go cold.

“You don't know?” she said.

Luca looked at her.

“It's where my mother lives. Twenty-three women live there. Some are widows. Some were nurses or teachers. Two worked in the factories that used to be on the river. They pay what they can.” Emma stopped, embarrassed by the force in her own voice. “They're being told to move out before Christmas.”

Vanessa's hand flew to the back of her chair. Carlo remained motionless.

Luca looked toward his fiancée. “You told me the foundation had approved renovations at St. Agnes.”

“It did.”

“Renovations that require the residents to leave?”

“Temporarily. The building isn't safe.”

“Then why does Emma think they're being evicted?”

“Because the notices were written badly,” Carlo said. “I can call the attorneys tomorrow.”

Father Thomas shook his head. “The notices were perfectly clear.”

He turned to Luca. “Your mother bought that house with money she inherited from her aunt. She wanted women with nowhere else to go to have a place where no one could send them away because they became old or inconvenient.”

Luca remembered something: Thursdays when he was a boy, his mother leaving the family house in a plain gray coat, carrying a basket covered with a towel. His father used to say she had gone to see her dressmaker. Once, Luca had asked to go with her. She had kissed his forehead and told him not yet.

“She used to bring back cinnamon rolls,” he said.

Father Thomas smiled sadly. “Mrs. Reed taught her how to make them.”

Emma looked up. “My mother?”

“Marian Reed. She ran the kitchen then. Your mother and Lucia used to argue about whether the raisins should be soaked first.”

Emma could hardly imagine the woman who counted grocery coupons sitting beside a Moretti, arguing about raisins. But she could imagine her mother doing it. Marian had never been impressed by a fancy surname.

Luca looked again at the letter. “She says the house was never to be sold.”

“It wasn't,” Father Thomas said. “That was her wish, and it was put into a trust.”

Carlo drew out a chair. “Lucia's charitable trust was reorganized years ago. These matters aren't decided by sentiment.”

“No,” Luca said. “They're decided by documents. I intend to see them.”

Vanessa picked up her engagement ring, but did not put it on. “You have a board meeting at eight. Your company is negotiating a bond issue. You cannot simply abandon everything to chase this.”

“I can do both.”

“You always say that.” Her voice was suddenly tired, and for a moment she looked less like a woman in a red dress than someone who had been awake for a very long time. “You think every problem has a solution because somebody in this house always makes one for you.”

He absorbed the criticism without replying. Emma wondered how often Vanessa had been right about him, and whether being right about one thing made it easier to excuse being wrong about another.

Carlo rose. “This evening is over. Vanessa, come.”

She followed him to the door. Halfway there, she turned to Emma.

“Your employment here is finished.”

Luca stood. “You don't make that decision.”

“I hired her for the engagement staff.”

“And I am telling you she's staying until we sort this out.”

Vanessa looked from one to the other. Then she went out without another word.

After Carlo's car pulled away, Father Thomas asked to be taken home. Luca offered his driver. The priest declined. He had a friend waiting nearby, he said, though Emma doubted that was true. Mrs. Alvarez wrapped two lemon cakes for him in a napkin and helped him into his coat.

When the house had settled into its usual late-night creaks, Luca found Emma near the service pantry, rinsing glasses that did not need rinsing.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“You don't owe me anything, Mr. Moretti.”

“I've lived in this house for years and let other people tell me how it was run.”

She looked at him. He seemed older without the guests, his tie loosened and the first exhaustion visible in his face.

“My mother will lose her room,” Emma said. “She won't tell anyone she's frightened. She folds her clothes every morning as though she's practicing for leaving.”

Luca leaned against the doorframe. “Will you take me there tomorrow?”

Emma considered the request. The house on Archer Avenue was not a place where wealthy men could make everything right by arriving in expensive cars.

“Come without your driver,” she said. “And don't wear that suit.”

He gave the smallest smile. “All right.”

Before she left, Mrs. Alvarez called Emma into the old breakfast room. On the table was a photograph she had taken from the cedar cabinet upstairs. Two young women stood on the steps of a brick building. One was Lucia Moretti, laughing into the wind. The other wore an apron and held a newborn baby.

Emma recognized her mother's face.

“What baby is that?” she asked.