Brown Paper and Blue Thread
Chapter 02 - Brown Paper and Blue Thread
Luca did not open the gift in front of his guests. He sent the champagne away, asked his driver to take anyone home who wished to leave, and led Anna and Emma into the small library beside the dining room. He had spent years being obeyed without explanation. Tonight it embarrassed him to hear the same habit in his own voice.
Celia followed, her silver gown whispering across the rug. "I will not have accusations made about Helena," she said. Luca had not mentioned Helena. He noticed that before anything else.
Anna stood by the bookshelves. The library smelled of leather, burnt wood, and the lemon oil used on the desk. When they were children, she had hidden a tin of Christmas cookies behind the history books and given Luca the key. She glanced toward the place where it used to be. "You're still keeping his desk," she said. Their father had been gone for twelve years. "Some things are easier to hold on to than people."
"Tell me what you meant," Luca said.
"Open your present first."
He slid the string off without cutting it. Inside the paper was a shallow wooden box, scarred along one edge and polished by years of use. The lid lifted with a little resistance. There was a silver thimble, two blue buttons, a narrow strip of white cotton sewn with uneven blue thread, and a photograph of a baby asleep beneath a knitted blanket. On the back, in Helena's handwriting, were four words: *Tell him when ready.*
Luca sat down. He recognized the cotton. It was part of a small cap Helena used to put on Grace when she was an infant. There had been two blue stitches at the edge because she said perfectly matched things made her nervous. The thimble was Anna's. When Luca was eight, she taught him to sew a button back on his school blazer and pricked her finger badly enough to swear in front of their mother.
"What is this?"
"A box Helena left with the old pediatric nurse, June Bell. June brought it to me after Helena's funeral. She said Helena couldn't bear to destroy it and didn't trust anyone in this house to deliver it."
Celia gave a small dismissive sound. "June Bell was fired for taking medication home."
"June retired after thirty years," Emma said, almost whispering. "I spoke to her yesterday. Her records say so."
Celia swung toward her. "And you are?"
"Someone who checks before repeating a story, ma'am."
Luca put the photograph under the desk lamp. He could not identify the baby; infants looked so much alike in old pictures. But the date on the back made his throat constrict. June 18, nine years earlier. The day he had flown home from Montreal to find Helena in a private hospital room, holding a daughter he had been told had arrived early.
He had missed the birth. He had missed the preceding two days as well, held in Montreal by an emergency that turned out to be less urgent than his mother had insisted. Helena had been pale and strangely distant. He remembered asking whether she was all right. She had answered, "We need to get her home."
"She was your wife," Celia said, reading him with old, practiced accuracy. "You don't get to turn a difficult birth into a conspiracy because Anna wants attention."
"I haven't turned it into anything." Luca placed the cap between them. "You arranged the hospital, didn't you? St. Agnes Women's Center."
"Of course. It was the best place available."
"Why did Helena say the baby was early when the date in her discharge summary was a week later?"
Celia's expression changed so little another man might have missed it. "You have a poor memory for medical details."
"I've developed an interest."
Anna sat opposite him. "You remember Mara Sullivan?"
Luca looked at Emma. She did not look away.
He had known Mara when he was twenty-five: a young archivist at the old city museum, stubborn enough to tell him the Moretti family should stop trying to buy objects with questionable histories. He had loved the way she said things he didn't want to hear. Their relationship ended after a quarrel he still regretted. Mara sent him a note saying she needed a clean break. He had sent one back, apologizing. Then, within months, he had married Helena in a small ceremony that pleased Celia enormously.
"What does Mara have to do with this?" he asked.
"Mara is my sister," Emma said. "She's ten years older than I am. I was sixteen when she went to St. Agnes."
Luca could hear the radiator tapping behind the wall. In the dining room, glasses were being cleared away. The ordinary sounds of the house continued while his sense of the past rearranged itself.
"Why are you working here?"
"At first, I needed the salary," Emma said. "Later I needed to know if Grace was safe. I wasn't certain what I believed. My sister has spent nine years mourning a child she was told died at birth. Six months ago she saw a photograph of Grace in a newspaper article about your charity concert. She noticed a knitted cap with two blue stitches. She had made it herself."
Celia stood abruptly. "This is obscene. You have smuggled an impostor into my son's home."
Emma's face flushed, but she held her ground. "I don't know yet what happened. I do know my sister made that cap. Her hands made those stitches. When the nurse told her the baby was gone, the cap had gone too."
Luca stared at the strip of cotton. He thought of Helena rocking Grace through sleepless nights, of her patience when Grace learned to walk, of the sharp, almost frightened way she sometimes shut a door when Celia began discussing motherhood. Love had filled their home. So, apparently, had a silence none of them knew how to touch.
"Where is Mara now?" he asked.
"Vermont. She teaches art classes. She hasn't agreed to come here."
"Why not?"
"Because she remembers what happened the last time she trusted your family."
Anna reached across the desk. Her hand was rougher than he remembered. "Please don't make promises tonight, Lu. Find out the facts. Whatever they are, Grace shouldn't pay for another adult's need to be right."
The library door opened a crack. A small voice came from the hall. "Daddy? Why did Grandma tell everybody to go home?"
Grace stood barefoot in a blue nightgown, a book hugged to her chest. Luca covered the photograph with his palm before he could think. Grace noticed. She always did.
"Is Aunt Anna here?" she asked.
The question startled him. "How do you know that name?"
May you like
Grace looked from him to Anna and smiled tentatively. "Mom showed me a picture once. She said if I ever met her, I should ask about the blue stitches."
Then she pointed at the cotton on Luca's desk. "That's the cap I wasn't supposed to have."
