🥀 SEVENTY-TWO HOURS TOO LATE

Chapter 04 - The Woman Who Came Alone

Rose Bellini stood in the foyer with rain darkening the shoulders of her school coat. She was sixteen, perhaps seventeen at a distance, with her mother's thick dark hair and a grave, assessing face. She held a canvas book bag against her stomach. It was the kind of gesture that made a young person look much younger.

Dominic had pictured this meeting too many times. In some versions he felt an immediate kinship. In others he resented her mother so violently that he had to leave the room. The actual girl was looking at an enormous vase of lilies with unconcealed dislike.

"They smell like a funeral home," she said when he approached.

"They were meant for a wedding."

"I know. I'm sorry."

He took her coat and asked whether she wanted tea. She said water would be fine. Celeste remained near the staircase, one hand resting on the banister. Rose noticed her and looked quickly away.

"My mother doesn't know I'm here," Rose said. "She would have stopped me."

"Then I'd better tell her you're safe."

"Please wait until I've said what I came to say."

He could have insisted on calling immediately. Instead he asked the house manager to stay nearby and had water brought to the front sitting room, where the doors remained open. Some habits of caution were appropriate, even in a family whose other habits had become ugly.

Rose sat on the edge of an armchair, refusing to lean against its embroidered back. Dominic noticed that she'd repaired a split seam on the strap of her bag with bright orange thread. Nora would have noticed, too. She noticed things people fixed for themselves: a cuff turned twice, a chipped cup kept in use, the inventive repairs that revealed more about a household than photographs did. He found himself wondering whether Nora had made it to breakfast, whether she was cold, whether she was finally sleeping after three nights of his evasions. Then he made himself pay attention to the frightened girl in front of him.

Rose removed a folded paper from her bag. It was a school photograph, faded at the edges. Three young adults stood beside a motorboat: Vivienne, Dominic, and his brother Adrian, who was laughing at something just outside the frame. The photograph had been taken the summer before Adrian died. Dominic felt his stomach tighten.

"My mother said you're my father," Rose began. "But I found letters in a box under her bed. The letters were from Adrian. He called me his little pearl before I was even born."

Dominic stared at the photograph. Adrian had been five years older, broad-shouldered and careless in manner, the one person who could make Dominic laugh when he was determined not to. They had fought about the company during the final year of Adrian's life. The last thing Dominic had said to him was, "You're too frightened of Father to do what's right." Three days later the pier burned.

"Why didn't your mother tell me?" he asked.

"She said the wrong people would find out. She said I would be taken away. I'm sixteen. Nobody can just take me away, can they?"

Dominic chose his words. "Not because of a story somebody tells about your family. If you're worried about your safety, we can find a lawyer who works for you. Not for me or for your mother."

Rose nodded, though she looked skeptical. She turned the photograph over. On the back, in Adrian's handwriting, was a date and a line in Italian: *Nothing stays hidden from the tide forever.* He had always liked grand phrases. Dominic remembered being irritated by them.

"There's more," Rose said. "Mom cried after the rehearsal dinner. She told Grandpa Rafe he'd promised that lady wouldn't lose her business."

"Rafe isn't your grandfather."

"I know. I call him that because my mother says it's easier. I don't like him."

She looked at Dominic carefully. "Was Nora angry with me?"

The question caught him more painfully than an accusation would have. "Nora was never angry with you. She was angry with the adults who treated her as if she didn't deserve the truth."

Rose pressed her lips together. "That's what I thought."

He asked whether she had eaten. She said no. They ordered sandwiches from the kitchen. Celeste watched the child from the doorway, the resemblance to Adrian plain enough now that it seemed impossible anyone had ever pretended otherwise.

While Rose ate, Dominic called Vivienne and told her where her daughter was. She arrived within half an hour, frightened and furious, her dark hair pinned badly under a scarf. She did not look like a rival from an elegant party. She looked like a mother who had imagined every car accident between home and this house.

"Don't ever do that again," she told Rose, then knelt to examine the girl's face as if searching for injury.

"I'm fine, Mom."

"You left your phone at school."

"So you couldn't track me."

Vivienne closed her eyes. Dominic recognized the desperate arithmetic of a parent trying to decide which argument could wait.

"Rose knows about Adrian," he said gently.

Vivienne did not pretend confusion. She sank onto a chair. "I suppose she would find out eventually."

"You could have told me."

"When? When I was twenty-four and your brother had just been buried? Your father told me if I made trouble, they'd say Adrian had been drunk that night. Later your mother offered to help us leave the city. I took the money. I told myself that made me practical."

"And last week?"

Vivienne looked at the floor. "Rafe said he'd stop paying the school fees. He said Rose's name would be in the papers. He wanted me to make you postpone the wedding. I thought postponing wasn't the same as ending it. I was wrong."

Dominic wanted to ask why she had allowed herself to be used. Instead he remembered how long he had allowed Rafe to remain in charge of contracts he did not trust. Fear made practical people foolish; power made foolish men bold.

"You hurt Nora," he said.

"I know."

"You'll need to tell her yourself. But not today. She doesn't owe any of us a hearing."

Rose stood and put on her coat. At the door she turned back. "I found one other thing. In Uncle Rafe's office."

She reached into the pocket of her school bag and handed Dominic a business card, yellowed with age. *Elias Mercer, Historic Joinery and Restoration.* On the back was an address Dominic knew well: Nora's studio. Beneath it, Adrian had written two words in red pencil.