Chapter 4: The House on Maple Street
Luca was already moving before I fully understood what the message meant.
"Emily stays here," he said.
He looked at one of the remaining staff near the doorway.
"Get her water.
Get her whatever she needs.
She doesn't leave this room."
Emily grabbed his arm.
"Dad —"
"You're six months pregnant." He covered her hand with his.
"You are not coming."
"That's my mother's house."
"I know." His voice went very quiet.
"Which is exactly why I need you to stay here."
Something passed between them.
Emily's grip loosened.
Luca looked at me.
"You too, Claire."
"I understand, Mr.
Moretti."
He nodded once.
Then he looked at Vanessa.
"You're coming with me."
She straightened.
"Luca, I don't think —"
"That wasn't a question."
Two of his men appeared at the doorway as if they'd been waiting there the entire evening, which I suspected they had.
Vanessa looked between them and Luca.
She picked up her evening bag.
She didn't argue again.
They left.
The dining room felt enormous with just Emily and me in it.
She stood very still for a moment, her hand still resting over her stomach.
Then she sat down slowly in the nearest chair.
Not her father's chair.
Not Vanessa's.
A neutral one near the window.
"She's lying," Emily said.
I sat down across from her.
Not because it was my place.
Because she needed someone to sit across from her.
"Which part?" I asked.
She looked at me.
"All of it.
My mother wasn't —" She stopped.
Started again.
"My mother used to leave food on the porch for a family down the street when their father lost his job.
She volunteered at the hospital for eleven years.
She kept every letter my father ever wrote her in a shoebox under the bed." Her voice cracked.
"She was not an informant."
"I believe you," I said.
She wiped her eyes quickly.
"You don't know that."
"No.
But I know what I've seen in this house for the past year.
I know how your father talks about her.
That is not how a man talks about someone who betrayed him."
Emily was quiet for a moment.
"Then why is there a locked cabinet?" she asked.
I didn't have an answer for that.
She looked toward the window.
Outside, the city was doing what cities do — completely indifferent to what was happening inside this room.
"When I was twelve," Emily said, "I found my mother crying in the kitchen.
It was three in the morning.
I came down for water and she was just sitting there in the dark." She paused.
"I asked her what was wrong.
She said she was just tired.
I believed her because I was twelve and she was my mother and I thought mothers didn't lie to their children about important things."
"Emily."
"I never asked her again." She looked at her hands.
"Not once in fifteen years."
"That's not a failure," I said.
"That's just being her daughter."
She didn't answer.
Her phone buzzed on the table between us.
She looked at the screen.
Michael.
She picked it up.
"Hi." A pause.
"No, I'm still here.
Something happened." Another pause.
"I'll explain everything when I get home.
I promise." She listened for a moment.
"I know.
I love you too."
She set the phone down.
"He wants to drive up," she said.
"He's been worried since I left this afternoon."
"That's a good man," I said.
She almost smiled.
"He really is."
We sat quietly for a little while.
The kind of quiet that isn't uncomfortable.
The kind that comes after too much has happened too fast, and both people in the room just need a moment to breathe.
Then Emily's phone rang again.
Not Michael this time.
She looked at the screen and her face changed completely.
It was her father.
She answered immediately.
"Dad.
What happened?
Did you find —" She stopped.
Listened.
Her free hand went flat on the table.
"Say that again," she said.
She listened for another ten seconds.
Then she looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen on her face all evening.
Not grief.
Not anger.
Fear.
"He found something in the cabinet," she said slowly, the phone still at her ear.
"But it isn't what Vanessa said."
She put the phone on speaker.
Luca's voice filled the quiet room.
"Emily.
The documents in that cabinet.
May you like
They're not records of what your mother gave Carbone." A pause.
"They're evidence of what Carbone did to her."
