The Cabinet in the Winter Room
Chapter 02 - The Cabinet in the Winter Room
By nine-thirty the guests had gone, each of them pretending that a sudden headache or early meeting had brought the evening to its natural conclusion. In the kitchen, a caterer wrapped untouched lamb in foil while Vanessa's roses began to shed petals into their water.
Olivia stayed because Rosa asked her to. She was beginning to see that Rosa rarely asked for anything without a reason.
Luca had gone to speak to Vanessa in the library. Their voices remained low. It was somehow more uncomfortable than an argument. Once, Olivia heard her own name. She went outside onto the rear terrace and watched a delivery truck reverse down the alley, its lights reflecting in puddles.
Sofia followed with two cups of tea.
"Rosa says you're Helen Hayes's daughter," the older woman said.
"You knew my mother?"
"A little. I knew her stubbornness better than her face." Sofia wrapped her hands around the cup. "She once refused to let a boardroom full of rich men call a hungry woman ungrateful. I've admired her for that since 2009."
"Then why was she accused?"
"Because admiration and courage aren't always the same thing. I had the first. I didn't have enough of the second."
It was an answer Olivia did not like. She believed it anyway.
The winter room stood beyond the conservatory, where Luca's mother, Isabella, had kept her books and the porcelain dogs she collected from flea markets. A sheet covered the old cabinet. The brass key fitted the bottom lock only after Rosa turned it twice and pulled the door toward her.
Inside was nothing dramatic. Three ledger books, a tin of photographs, a packet of recipe cards tied with green ribbon. The emptiness around them made Olivia uneasy.
"Someone cleared the rest," Rosa murmured.
Luca bent to examine the shelves. "When?"
"After Isabella died. Your uncle Domenico had the room emptied. He said you authorized it."
"I was in Boston arranging the funeral."
Sofia looked at him. "And you let Domenico handle the estate because you could not bear to come home."
Luca said nothing. An ordinary person might have defended himself. His silence, Olivia thought, was either unusual honesty or practice at concealing what he felt.
Isabella Moretti had died eighteen months earlier after a long illness. Luca had told newspapers that she was the finest person he knew. Olivia remembered reading that and feeling a childish flare of resentment. Her mother had been a fine person, too. There had been no newspaper photograph at her funeral.
Rosa opened the top ledger. The entries began in 1998: groceries, winter coats, school shoes, rent deposits for women leaving unsafe homes. Isabella had established Rose House as a shelter, then expanded it into a modest property trust. Three older buildings, some small apartments, and a community kitchen had made its work possible for decades.
The last pages, dated 2009, contained figures that didn't belong. Payments to companies with names like Harbor Light Consulting and North Basin Properties. Six identical authorizations written on separate dates in the same blue ink.
"My mother found this," Olivia said.
"Your mother made copies," Rosa replied. "Then the board said the original books had been lost in a flood."
"There was no flood," Luca said.
"There was a burst pipe," Sofia answered. "In an empty storeroom. Domenico called it a flood because he knew everyone would remember that word."
Olivia touched the last entry. Next to a withdrawal of eighty-four thousand dollars, someone had drawn a tiny star. Her mother used to mark important things with stars: medicines to remember, birthdays, the pages of library books she wanted Olivia to read.
"She marked it," Olivia whispered.
On the back cover was an envelope addressed in her mother's handwriting: *For the person willing to look twice.* It contained a receipt from a neighborhood print shop and a single photograph. In the picture, Helen stood beside Isabella outside Rose House, holding a cardboard box. Behind them was Domenico Moretti and a tall blond woman Olivia recognized after a moment as Vanessa's mother, Patricia Bellini.
Vanessa had been nineteen then. She probably hadn't even known who Helen was.
Luca studied the photograph. "Why was Patricia on the board?"
Sofia answered, "She wasn't. She was the trust's lawyer."
"She still handles our family foundations," he said. "Vanessa told me she had retired from practice."
A telephone rang in another room. None of them moved until Luca answered it. Olivia heard him say, "Not tonight," and then, "I'll call you in the morning."
He returned holding the phone as if he disliked its weight.
"That was Domenico. He says someone is spreading lies about Rose House and that a developer needs our signatures tomorrow." He glanced at Olivia. "He also says you have stolen documents."
Her stomach tightened. "I took a key. I didn't take the folder. Vanessa put it in her bag before she pushed me."
"I believe you about the key," Luca said. "The rest we need to verify."
It was a disappointing answer, which made it more valuable than an easy declaration of faith.
Sofia laid the photograph on the table. "You won't sign anything tomorrow."
"No," Luca said. "I won't."
The winter room door opened. Vanessa stood there without her diamonds, wrapped in a cream cardigan that made her appear younger and less certain of herself.
"I've been looking everywhere for you." She saw the open ledger and closed her eyes for half a second. "Oh, Luca."
"Why did you lie about Olivia?"
Vanessa looked at the maid, then Rosa, then Sofia. She seemed to understand that the usual answer would not help her.
"Because the person who told me to get that folder said he would ruin my brother if I failed."
"Who?" Luca asked.
Vanessa reached into her cardigan pocket and placed a folded sheet on the desk. It was a notice announcing the sale of all three Rose House buildings, signed on behalf of the trust.
At the bottom, beneath the date of tomorrow's meeting, Olivia saw Luca's name.
He looked at the signature for a long time.
May you like
"That's not mine," he said.
Vanessa's voice was almost inaudible. "I know. But the man who put it there says it won't matter, because by tomorrow morning the buildings will already belong to him."
