✉️ THE LETTERS VANESSA HID

Chapter 09 - The Maid Who Came Looking

I had written those words on my application in a section the hiring agency had marked confidential. It was supposed to explain why I wanted work in a private household rather than at a hotel.

I'd imagined someone at the agency might read it. I hadn't imagined it would be projected across the dining room of a private club.

Baines stood beside the screen looking pleased with himself.

“Miss Sullivan has pursued a personal vendetta,” he said. “She gained employment through deception and has spent months taking private information from Mr. Moretti's home.”

“She's taken nothing,” Luca said.

“Are you certain?”

I stepped forward. “No, he isn't. I haven't told him everything.”

Luca looked at me then, and the hurt in his eyes was almost worse than if he'd turned away.

“Emma,” he said quietly. “What did you do?”

“I photographed a shipping invoice from the old archive. Three months ago. I thought it might relate to my father. I showed it to a legal aid worker and then deleted it from my phone.”

The room was silent. Franco Bellini leaned back as if he'd won a small but important bet.

I continued because stopping would have made me feel like the frightened girl I'd been when my father first lost his job.

“I applied to this house because I wanted to know what happened to him. I also needed work. Both things were true. I didn't fabricate any papers, and I didn't ask anybody to be hurt.”

Baines raised a finger. “Admitting unauthorized access is hardly a defense.”

“Neither is filing a document for a man who has been dead for six years,” I said.

Somebody at the back coughed. Miriam Feld stood beside me with her notepad open.

“We will respond to any legitimate concerns about my client's conduct,” she said. “But this presentation is not a court. Mr. Bellini, are you willing to provide the original of that notarized statement?”

Franco's jaw tightened. “Copies have legal force.”

“Some do,” Miriam replied. “Forgeries don't.”

Baines moved toward the laptop, but Luca spoke first.

“Keep the document on the screen.”

He looked at the signature beneath my father's name.

“Emma, you told me your father's writing was different.”

“It was. And the address is wrong. We moved from Halsted Street to our apartment on Polk three months before that date. Whoever prepared this used an older address.”

The distinction might have been small to everyone else. To me it was enormous. We had moved because the rent went up after the accusations. I remembered helping my mother carry boxes down three flights of stairs. I remembered the rain coming through the open van door onto my schoolbooks.

“My father never called that apartment home,” I said. “He hated it. But he lived there.”

Baines cleared his throat. “An administrative error.”

“Then let a court examine it,” Miriam answered.

Franco turned off the screen. He'd apparently decided the meeting was over. Luca remained standing.

“Before you leave,” he said, “I want every investor in this room to know that I have suspended support for the Bellini redevelopment. We are challenging the transfer of Harbor Mercy Holdings and preserving the relevant records. Any documents held by Moretti companies will be available to independent counsel.”

“This is a personal matter,” Franco said.

“No,” Luca answered. “It became personal when you put the name of a dead man on a title schedule. It should have been a public matter from the beginning.”

People began leaving. Chairs scraped, coats rustled, phones lit up. Franco and Baines were soon standing alone beside the dark screen. Marco remained by the door.

I thought Luca might speak to me. Instead he waited for the room to empty, then asked Miriam and Judith to secure the notes and recordings. His voice was professional, almost cold.

Outside, he stopped beside the car.

“You should have told me why you applied.”

“Yes.”

“I trusted you.”

“I know.”

“Did you think I would cover up the truth?”

“I didn't know you. Your company had spent twenty-two years covering it up. I thought there was a chance you would.”

He took that in without arguing.

“I needed the job too,” I added. “I could have lost my apartment. I should have told you once I knew you better, but by then I was afraid it would sound like I'd been lying all along.”

“Some of it was a lie,” he said. “Not what you did for Rosa. Not what you found. But why you were there.”

He was right. That was what made it difficult to hear.

“I'll resign,” I said.

“You can take paid leave while we sort this out. You don't have to decide tonight.”

“No. I need to be able to look at myself without wondering which version of the truth I allowed somebody to buy.”

I handed him the key to my staff room. He didn't take it at first. Then he did, as gently as if I were giving him something breakable.

“Where will you go?”

“To Mercy House for tonight, if they have room.”

“Rosa would like that.”

“So would I.”

It was after midnight by the time we parted. I took a cab to the South Side with my mother's letter in my coat pocket. Rosa was sitting awake in the common room, eating toast and watching a nature documentary with the sound turned low.

She looked at my face and made room beside her.

“Tell me,” she said.

So I did. I told her I'd lost the job, or given it up; I wasn't sure which. I told her about the application and the invoice and the look on Luca's face. Rosa listened without defending me or condemning me.

When I finished she said, “June once told me that a lie begins to die when a person can say it out loud without making excuses.”

“I miss her.”

“I do too.”

We sat together until the nature documentary ended.

Then Rosa reached into her cardigan pocket and gave me an envelope addressed in Luca's father's handwriting.

“I've been holding this since the night June went to the hospital,” she said. “I hoped we wouldn't need it.”