Chapter 6: My Father's Voice
The letter was six pages long.
He had written it in English, which surprised me.
My mother had always said his English was poor when he arrived.
But this was careful, considered English, the kind a person writes when they have looked every word up and chosen it deliberately.
I read it aloud.
I don't know why.
Perhaps because thirty years of silence felt like enough.
*Elena.*
*If you are reading this, then you came looking.
That means your mother raised you right.
I always knew she would.*
*I am going to tell you things in this letter that I could not say in the document.
The document is for lawyers.
This is for you.*
*I did not leave you.
I need you to know that before anything else.
I did not choose to go.
I was told that if I stayed, the people I had informed on would find a way to use you and your mother against me.
They had already made one threat.
I believed them.
I chose to go because I believed that a living father in another country was safer for you than a father who stayed and brought danger to your door.*
*I was wrong.
I know that now.
But I want you to understand what I was thinking when I made that choice.
I was thinking of you.
I was always thinking of you.*
Vincent had not moved.
Sal was still near the door.
Ruggiero had folded his hands on the table and was looking at the middle distance the way a man looks when he is trying to give someone privacy in a room with no walls.
I kept reading.
*The locket belonged to my mother.
Inside it are the two people I loved most in the world.
Your grandmother chose your mother's photograph herself.
She said, Marco, a man should carry his heart where he can see it.*
*I gave it to young Vincent because I trusted his father, and because I knew that if I was carrying it when they stopped me, they would take it.
I could not bear for them to take it.*
*If you have found Vincent, then the locket found its way home.
That is enough for me.*
*There is money.*
I stopped reading.
"There is money," I said again, aloud, because the words had not fully arrived the first time.
I looked at the next paragraph.
*When I reached Marseille, I had three weeks before they found me.
In those three weeks I did not sit still.
I had contacts your grandfather had given me — men who owed the Ferretti name a debt that had nothing to do with Caruso or his arrangements.
I moved money through those contacts into an account that I registered in your name.
Your full name.
Elena Rosa Ferretti.
I chose a bank in Zurich because it was the most boring, most reliable, most unromantic place I could think of, and I wanted your money to be safe, not interesting.*
*I was not a wealthy man.
But I was owed certain things, and I collected them in those three weeks.
The account has been sitting for thirty years.
I do not know what it is worth now.
I only know what I put in.*
*Ruggiero has the account details.
He has had them since 1994.
He was instructed to give them to you, and only to you, when you came.*
I looked at Ruggiero.
He reached into the briefcase for the third time and placed a single card on the table.
I did not pick it up yet.
I went back to the letter.
*I thought about you every day.
I want you to know that without any decoration.
Every single day.
I thought about what you would look like.
Whether you would have your mother's laugh.
Whether you would be stubborn — you were already stubborn at four, Elena, you refused to sleep unless someone held your hand, and I used to sit beside your bed for an hour after you fell asleep because I could not make myself leave.*
*I am sorry I left.*
*I am sorry it was not safe to stay.*
*I am sorry those are not the same apology.*
*Take the money.
Take the documents to the right people.
Make sure the name Ferretti means something clean when this is over.*
*I love you.
I loved you from the first moment.
I will love you past the last.*
*Your father,*
*Marco*
I set the letter down on the table.
Nobody spoke.
Then Vincent said, very quietly, "He used to call my father every Sunday.
For years before I was born.
My father said Marco Ferretti was the funniest man he had ever known.
He could make anyone laugh.
Even in a bad situation." A pause.
"Especially in a bad situation."
I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth.
"He sounds like he was," I managed.
"He was," Vincent said.
"I only met him twice.
But I remember."
Sal made a sound near the door that was not quite a word.
He turned away and looked at the wall, and I understood that he had known my father too, and that this was his way of grieving in a room full of people.
I picked up the card Ruggiero had set on the table.
The account number meant nothing to me.
But the balance printed below it — updated as of the first of January, thirty years of interest compounded on whatever my father had managed to gather in three weeks in Marseille — made the room tilt slightly.
"Is this correct?" I asked Ruggiero.
"It is."
I set the card back down.
"What happens to Vivian?" I asked.
Ruggiero straightened the papers in front of him.
"That depends on what you want to do with the document."
"What are my options?"
"You can give it to the federal authorities.
The financial crjmes it describes have no statute of limitations.
Vivian DeMarco, as Caruso's heir and the person who concealed this document and potentially interfered with a federal witness, faces significant exposure." He paused.
"Or you can do nothing.
The choice is yours.
It was always meant to be yours."
I thought about Vivian's smile.
The way she had said my name at the door like a measurement.
I thought about my mother reading one letter once a year with the door closed.
"Give it to the authorities," I said.
Vincent nodded once.
"There's one more thing," Ruggiero said.
He looked at Vincent.
"Your engagement."
Vincent was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," he said.
"There is that."
He stood.
Walked to the window.
Outside, the January sleet had stopped.
The street below Belladonna House was wet and empty and very still.
"She came to me," he said.
Not to anyone in particular.
"Two years.
I thought—" He stopped.
"It doesn't matter what I thought."
"It matters," I said.
He looked back at me.
"She used you," I said.
"To get to the document.
To stay close to this house.
That's not a small thing to carry."
"No," he said.
"It isn't."
"I'm not saying that to make it worse."
"I know." He turned back to the window.
"I know you're not."
Sal's phone buzzed.
He looked at it.
"She's at her apartment.
She hasn't left."
Vincent nodded.
"Let her stay there tonight." He looked at Ruggiero.
"How quickly can you get the document to the right hands?"
"I can make a call in the morning."
"Make it tonight."
Ruggiero reached for his phone.
I picked up my father's letter and folded it carefully along the original creases.
Six pages.
Thirty years.
A man sitting in a room in Marseille writing English words by hand because he wanted his daughter to understand.
I put the letter in my apron pocket, against my chest.
May you like
The locket was still around my neck.
I had not taken it off.
