The Other Girl
Chapter 06 - The Other Girl
Helena Vale insisted on meeting in a place that served proper pie. She had been a nurse for forty-one years and, in retirement, judged restaurants almost entirely by the crust. They chose a family café in Evanston. Helena arrived with a cane, a yellow envelope and an expression that suggested she would leave if anybody spoke to her as though she were fragile.
Emily came with Mrs. Bell. Allison came alone. Luca had offered a driver; Emily declined and took the train. They needed, she said, fewer men making arrangements.
Allison had dressed for the meeting in black, then changed to a soft gray sweater because she didn't want to look as though she were attending a funeral. Emily wore the same blue scarf Marta had given her in college. They noticed one another's careful choices and didn't comment. Everyone had begun to behave gently around them. Some days it was a relief; others it felt like being wrapped in tissue paper.
Nora brought a notepad but asked permission before writing anything down. Mrs. Bell chose the table nearest the window, where Helena could see the street. The small acts of consideration steadied Emily. They did not fix the past. They made the present more bearable.
Helena ordered cherry pie and waited until the waitress had gone. "I want to say this before you ask me anything. I should have come forward twenty-five years ago. I reported concerns through the hospital. When nothing happened, I went back to work. That was easier. I have spent a quarter of a century calling it survival."
Allison looked at the envelope. "Did you see my daughter?"
"I did. I put her little hat on. Marta knitted one later, when the first got lost. She was a healthy child. There were no complications that justified telling you otherwise."
"There was something else. You said you wanted to call her Emily. I remembered the name and gave it to Marta when she asked. I thought it was the least I could do. I should have done so much more."
The words fell like a cup carefully set on a wooden table. Allison nodded, although she could not have explained what she was agreeing with.
Helena opened the envelope. There were photocopies of hospital transfer sheets, entries made in her own shift notebook, and the names of women who had given birth through a charitable maternity program run from a separate floor. Their consent records bore troubling similarities: identical witnesses, repeated phrases, signatures recorded at times when patients were receiving medication.
"How many?" Emily asked.
"I know of seven children whose records deserve a fresh look. That doesn't mean seven mothers were lied to. Some may have made willing decisions. But it means someone should have asked questions."
The second girl in Marta's papers was Nina Vale, Helena's niece by marriage. She had been placed with relatives after her mother died; nothing suggested the placement itself had been unlawful. But Nina, now thirty, had spent years searching for the nurse who had spoken up about other families. Marta knew Nina because both their files passed through Victor Bellini's office. She had kept Nina's name not because the girls were sisters, but because Nina might become a witness.
"So there isn't another daughter?" Allison asked, almost apologetically.
"Not that I know," Helena said. "I won't make your story more sensational than it already is. One missing child is quite enough."
Emily smiled. Helena had a talent for making sobriety feel like courage.
She told them that the hospital had undergone a records review in 2006. Her formal complaint was marked unsupported because key patient files were missing. Victor Bellini had served on the hospital board and controlled the charitable foundation that funded the maternity wing. He had no medical authority to decide an infant's fate. Yet his initials appeared on the distribution sheets, the transport vouchers and the internal correspondence.
Helena pointed to an entry dated October 15. The ink on her original notebook had faded but was still legible. It listed the baby's weight, feeding time and an ordinary observation about a slight rash behind one ear. Emily touched the same place on her own head without realizing it.
"Those notes weren't part of the official chart," Helena said. "We kept them because paper disappeared. I was told I was suspicious by nature, which is an odd criticism of a nurse. When I first raised concerns, a supervisor told me young mothers changed their minds all the time and I should stop romanticizing motherhood. I was nearly fifty then. Old enough to know that changing your mind and having someone change it for you are not the same."
The waitress refilled Helena's coffee. Helena thanked her, then returned to the papers with the stubborn concentration of a woman who had waited long enough.
"Could the records have been altered by someone else?" Nora Feld asked over speakerphone.
"Of course. That's why I kept copies. That's why we need independent verification, not rumors."
As they rose to leave, Helena caught Allison's hand. "You probably want me to say something kind. But you deserve accuracy more than kindness. You never gave up that baby. Someone made a decision without you, and others helped conceal it."
In the parking lot Emily took a deep breath. "My mother loved me," she said. "Marta, I mean. I need everybody to remember that."
"I do," Allison answered. She had feared those words. Instead they comforted her. She did not want the woman who had raised Emily erased in order to make room for herself.
Back at the mansion, Luca waited in the small office adjoining the kitchen. Vanessa had returned at noon accompanied by two lawyers and had demanded access to certain documents in the family safe. He had refused. Her father, Victor, had called him four times. They had once played golf together and discussed Chicago real estate over long lunches. Luca now found himself remembering each conversation and wondering where a favor ended and an obligation began.
"You're not married yet," Mrs. Bell remarked when he told her. "A man can still walk away from a meal he knows will poison him."
Luca looked at her. "Do you always give legal advice with kitchen metaphors?"
"Only to men who don't listen to ordinary English."
He laughed, then stopped when his attorney entered with a photocopied banking instruction. The payment issued to Judith had come from an account at the Bellini charitable foundation, but the same account had been replenished from a Moretti company twenty-five years earlier, when Luca was ten. His late father had signed the deposit.
"Your family funded it," the attorney said. "Whether they knew what was happening is another matter."
Luca thought of the framed photograph in the entrance hall: his father, stern and unsmiling, standing beside Victor Bellini after a fundraiser. For years he had admired the picture as evidence that even difficult men could do good.
Now he asked the attorney to have the original ledgers secured before anyone touched them.
May you like
When Emily left the café, she received a text from a number not saved in her phone. It contained a photograph of the same metal tin she'd found at Marta's diner. The lid had been opened. The envelope marked *E. KEEP SAFE* lay beside it, empty.
Under the picture were seven words: *Stop asking about your mother. She's already paid.*
