✉️ THE LETTERS VANESSA HID

Chapter 02 - The Empty Page

Rosa took her tea with two spoons of sugar and no milk. She apologized when she spilled a little on the saucer.

I told her she was allowed to spill things in a house where people had just spent twenty thousand dollars on flowers.

She smiled at that. It was a small smile, but it seemed to take years off her face.

The library smelled of beeswax and cedar. In the hearth, a fire was burning so neatly that the logs looked arranged for a photograph. Rosa kept watching the door, even after Luca came in and told the man outside to leave us alone.

Vanessa did not come with him.

“She says you've been receiving treatment for confusion,” Luca said gently.

Rosa laid down her teaspoon. “I have arthritis. I forget where I leave my glasses. I do not forget what your father wrote.”

“Then tell me what happened to the missing page.”

He placed the letter between them on a low table. There were two sheets, numbered one and three. The staple holes on the upper corners matched. Page two was gone.

“That was there when I put it in the envelope,” Rosa said. “I kept it in my dresser until three weeks ago. Then a man from Vanessa's office came to talk about Mercy House.”

“Name?”

“Mr. Baines. The one with the soft hands.”

Edward Baines was Luca's attorney. He had been advising the Moretti family since Carlo was alive. Luca closed his eyes briefly, as if somebody had pressed against a bruise.

“Baines took the letter?”

“He asked to see my papers. Said he needed to inventory anything relating to the trust before I moved. When he returned it, I didn't think to count the pages. Why would I?”

Her question hung there.

I thought of my mother, who had signed documents in hospitals without reading them because she was too tired to argue. People like Edward Baines built careers on the belief that other people would be too tired, frightened, or polite to look twice.

Luca's phone vibrated. He ignored it.

“What trust?” he asked.

Rosa sat up straighter. “Mercy House wasn't Carlo's charity, Luciano. Not in the way people mean when they say charity. He gave the building back.”

“Back to whom?”

“The families who lived on Ash Wharf before the port expansion. Men lost their work. Widows lost their homes. Your father's company bought the land through agents and offered them next to nothing. Some refused. Then there was the fire.”

I'd been twelve when I first heard my parents speaking about the Ash Wharf fire. My father had worked as a night foreman for the Moretti docks. A newspaper had accused him of leaving a gate unlocked. After he died, my mother kept the clipping folded behind our family photograph, as if hiding it would change what it said.

I kept my hands folded in my lap.

Luca looked at Rosa. “My father told me the fire was an accident.”

“He may have believed that when it happened. Later, he knew things he'd refused to know before.”

She reached for his hand. “Mercy House was meant to put something right. Your father moved it into a separate company, Harbor Mercy Holdings, with restrictions. The residents could stay as long as they wished. The property was not to be sold for private development.”

“Then how is it being sold?”

“That,” Rosa said, “is what I hoped you would tell me.”

Luca called for his chief financial officer, a woman named Judith Hale. She arrived from the dinner wearing a sensible black suit and an expression that suggested the evening had already interrupted three important spreadsheets.

Judith listened without interrupting. When Luca asked about Harbor Mercy Holdings, her mouth tightened.

“We have a redevelopment proposal from Bellini Capital,” she said. “It's bundled with the South River properties. The proposed closing is Monday.”

“Who approved it?”

“Your office circulated a preliminary consent. Baines handled title review.”

“Did I sign?”

“There's an electronic authorization under your credentials.”

Luca stared at her. “I approved an evaluation, not a transfer.”

Judith took a tablet from her bag and found the document. I watched Luca read the authorization while Rosa stared at the fire.

“I never saw this attachment,” he said.

“Neither did I,” Judith replied. “I asked for the underlying trust papers twice. Baines told me they were being reconstructed from archives.”

Behind her professional calm, something moved. I had seen Judith look that way once before, when a supplier's invoice turned out to be fraudulent. She hated being made a fool of more than she feared being fired.

Luca told her to suspend the closing. Judith stepped into the hall to make calls.

I rose to refresh Rosa's tea, and Luca stopped me.

“Emma, how long did your mother work at Mercy House?”

His question caught me off guard.

“Almost sixteen years. She was a cook first. Later she looked after the residents.”

“Rosa told me. I'm sorry she died.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know anything about the Ash Wharf fire?”

The room was very warm. I wished suddenly for the cool kitchen and its ordinary noises.

“My father worked there,” I said. “Thomas Sullivan.”

Luca's gaze shifted to the letter on the table. I saw the name reach him before he spoke it.

“Thomas Sullivan,” he repeated. “The foreman they blamed.”

“Yes.”

“He died?”

“Six years ago. Never stopped insisting he was innocent.”

Rosa made a soft sound, almost a sob. “June never told me you were coming to this house,” she said. Then corrected herself: “She couldn't have. Forgive me.”

My mother's name in that room hurt more than I expected.

Luca took out the first page of his father's letter and read a sentence aloud.

“I once chose a convenient man to blame because the truth would have ruined people I loved.”

He looked up. “That might be your father.”

I had imagined being in this room hundreds of times. In every version I was brave. I laid my evidence on the desk. Luca Moretti listened. My father's name was cleared.

In the real room, my knees were trembling and I could barely speak.

“What happened to the missing page?” I asked.

Luca shook his head. “We're going to find out.”

His phone rang again. This time he answered.

For a long moment he listened without speaking. Then he asked Judith to repeat herself.

When he hung up, he looked at Rosa first.

“The sale has already been recorded as completed,” he said. “The title papers were filed yesterday. Someone backdated the authority.”