Chapter 8
PART 8: THE PAGE HE STOLE
I had seen my mother's handwriting thousands of times.
On birthday cards.
On grocery lists.
On the envelopes she used to leave beside my breakfast plate when she went to work early.
I knew the way she formed her capital letters.
I knew how the tail of her lowercase g curled to the left.
I knew she crossed her sevens because she was afraid they would look like ones.
The handwriting in the photograph was hers.
I would have recognized it anywhere.
If anything happens to me, tell Elena I tried.
I stared at those words until they blurred.
Matteo stood beside me.
"Elena?"
I couldn't answer.
Something about that sentence reached a place inside me that had remained wounded since I was fourteen.
My mother had tried.
Tried to protect me.
Tried to do what was right.
Tried to tell the truth to people who refused to hear it.
And somewhere in the middle of all that fear, she had worried that I might grow up believing she hadn't done enough.
I lowered myself into a chair.
"She thought she might die."
Matteo said nothing.
"She wrote that because she thought somebody might kill her."
His expression tightened.
"We don't know when it was written."
I looked up sharply.
"Don't."
He stopped.
"Don't turn this into something harmless just because it's easier to hear."
His face changed.
"You're right. I'm sorry."
I looked at the photograph again.
The paper had a jagged edge on the left.
Several small holes ran along it.
I recognized those holes.
My mother's notebook had once been bound with thread, and she'd repaired it several times using tape.
Some pages had come loose.
I opened my bag.
Pulled out the notebook.
Turned to the section where the folded warning had been hidden.
Then I stopped.
There was a narrow strip of paper near the spine.
Not large enough to attract attention.
But the edge was rough.
A page had been torn out.
I held the photograph beside it.
My fingers trembled.
"Matteo."
He leaned closer.
"This came from her notebook."
"Are you certain?"
"Look at the holes."
He examined the screen.
Then the damaged binding.
"The pattern is similar."
I looked at him.
"This page was removed."
"Possibly seventeen years ago."
"Or later."
His expression darkened.
He understood what I was thinking.
Somebody might have taken that page before my mother left Matteo's household.
Or someone might have reached her afterward.
Either possibility made my stomach twist.
"Whoever sent this has had it for years," I whispered.
Matteo nodded slowly.
"That may be why Luca believed he had eliminated the evidence."
I looked at him.
"He thought he'd taken her warning."
"Yes."
"But she wrote another one."
I touched the folded page in the notebook.
My mother's final warning.
The three scratches.
The initials.
The name hidden behind two letters.
"She didn't give up," I said.
Matteo looked at me.
"No."
A strange feeling moved through my chest.
Pride.
Painful and fierce.
My mother had been frightened.
But she had not surrendered.
After someone stole part of her evidence, she had preserved what she could remember.
She had written another warning.
And she had hidden it where nobody thought to look.
Inside a recipe notebook.
Under ordinary instructions.
Behind memories of birthday cakes and Sunday dinners.
She had known people might search for documents.
For names.
For obvious accusations.
But who would think to search a book filled with recipes?
And who would understand the importance of one particular dish unless they knew its history?
I looked down at the page.
The final ingredient must never go in early.
For years, I had thought that sentence was about preserving flavor.
Now it seemed to describe my mother's entire strategy.
She had waited.
Protected what she could.
Refused to reveal everything before the right moment.
And made sure I would remember the recipe.
Because the recipe connected her warning to a specific dinner.
A specific fork.
A specific betrayal.
I pressed my fingers against the paper.
"She knew what she was doing."
Matteo watched me.
"Yes."
"She wasn't simply hiding."
"No."
"She was keeping something alive."
He looked at the notebook.
"The truth."
I nodded.
"The truth."
The photograph arrived with no request.
That troubled me.
Threats usually demanded something.
Silence.
Money.
Obedience.
This one had been designed to hurt.
To make me think about my mother's final years.
To make me wonder what else had been taken from her.
I stared at the unfamiliar number.
"Why send this now?"
Matteo looked at the screen.
"To frighten you."
"But why show me the page?"
"To prove someone has it."
I shook my head.
"That's not enough."
He waited.
"Think about what Luca has done."
Matteo leaned against the table.
I continued.
"He had the fork. He knew about the old poisoning. He knew my mother was involved. Now somebody has a page she wrote."
"Yes."
"What does he want?"
"Control."
"Over you?"
Matteo's expression hardened.
"Possibly."
"Then maybe this isn't only about frightening me."
He studied me.
"What do you think?"
I looked at the notebook.
"If Luca has spent seventeen years believing he got away with something, he must hate the idea that my mother could still expose him."
"That seems likely."
"And now I'm doing what she did."
Matteo nodded.
"I'm asking questions. I'm remembering things. I'm not doing what he wants."
I looked toward the window.
"Maybe he wants me to stop before he loses everything."
Matteo said nothing for several seconds.
Then he asked, "What would make you stop?"
I looked at him.
The question caught me off guard.
I thought about my apartment.
My job.
The possibility of never feeling safe again.
I thought about being alone.
About waking in the night and checking the locks.
About the way my mother must have lived.
Finally, I answered.
"I don't know."
It was the truth.
I wanted justice.
But I also wanted to live.
I wanted to wake up and make coffee without wondering whether somebody had followed me home.
I wanted to go back to work without looking over my shoulder.
I wanted an ordinary life.
And I didn't know whether I could have both.
Matteo nodded.
"Then you don't have to decide everything today."
I looked at him.
"You don't get to tell me when to stop."
"I'm not."
He paused.
"I'm telling you that protecting yourself isn't the same as surrendering."
Those words stayed with me.
Because my mother had spent her life protecting me.
I needed to remember that staying alive was not a betrayal of her courage.
Later that afternoon, I asked Matteo to take me back to the apartment building where I had lived as a child.
Not my current apartment.
The old one in Cicero.
I hadn't visited it in years.
I didn't know why I needed to go.
Perhaps because the past was becoming so large that I wanted to stand somewhere real.
Somewhere my mother had lived.
Somewhere her fears had existed alongside ordinary happiness.
Matteo hesitated when I told him.
"Are you sure?"
"No."
He waited.
"But I want to."
We arranged to go during daylight with appropriate security nearby.
I made it clear that I didn't want a crowd following me.
Matteo agreed.
The building was smaller than I remembered.
The brick had darkened with age.
The front steps had been repaired.
The tree beside the sidewalk was taller.
I stood across the street and stared.
For a moment, I was eight again.
I could almost feel my backpack against my shoulders.
I remembered racing up those steps after school.
I remembered the smell of dinner drifting through the hallway.
My mother standing at the stove.
The blue notebook open beside her.
I remembered her telling me that people reveal themselves in small things.
How they treat waiters.
How they speak to people who cannot help them.
Whether they tell the truth when lying would be easier.
I had forgotten that last part.
Or perhaps I had never fully understood it.
Matteo stood a short distance away.
He didn't interrupt.
After a while, I asked, "Did you ever come here?"
He nodded.
"Once."
I turned.
"When?"
"After your mother left."
My chest tightened.
"Why?"
"I wanted to ask her to return."
I looked at him.
"After calling her a liar?"
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
His expression softened.
"She refused to open the door."
A small, painful satisfaction moved through me.
"Good."
He nodded.
"I deserved that."
I studied the building.
"Did you know I was inside?"
"No."
"I might have been."
He looked toward the second-floor windows.
"Then I owe you an apology for frightening your mother while you were home."
I didn't answer.
I was tired of apologies that arrived years too late.
But this one held something different.
He wasn't asking me to forgive him.
He was naming the harm.
And perhaps that mattered.
I turned toward the street.
"Let's go."
We had only taken a few steps when my phone rang.
Unknown number.
Matteo saw the screen.
"Don't answer."
I looked at him.
Then at the building.
I thought of my mother refusing to open the door.
I thought of seventeen years of silence.
And I thought of the page someone had stolen.
"I want to hear what he has to say."
Matteo's expression tightened.
"We can record the call and preserve it as evidence."
I nodded.
He contacted the investigator handling the evidence, then stepped back.
I answered with the phone on speaker.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Then a man's voice.
Familiar.
Smooth.
Controlled.
"Elena."
My blood ran cold.
Luca Ferraro.
I looked at Matteo.
His expression turned to stone.
"Luca," I said.
"I'm glad you're answering your phone."
My hand tightened.
"What do you want?"
"To help you understand something."
"Then explain the photograph."
A quiet laugh.
"You're a clever girl."
"Answer me."
"You have something that doesn't belong to you."
I looked at the notebook.
"My mother's recipes?"
"Her memories."
The words made my stomach twist.
"What do you know about her memories?"
Luca paused.
"More than you do."
I swallowed.
"Then tell me."
"Not over the phone."
Matteo made a small gesture.
Keep him talking.
I forced myself to breathe.
"Why should I meet you?"
"Because you want to know what happened seventeen years ago."
"I already know someone tried to poison Matteo."
A pause.
"And you think you know who."
"My mother wrote your initials."
Silence.
Then Luca spoke again.
"Your mother wrote a great many things."
I stared at the phone.
"How would you know?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, "Because she should have learned when to stop writing."
The words struck me harder than any direct threat.
I looked at Matteo.
His face had gone pale with anger.
I forced myself to remain calm.
"Did you take the page?"
A pause.
"What page?"
"The one you photographed."
Luca laughed quietly.
"Maybe."
"Why keep it?"
"Because people who try to interfere in things they don't understand have a habit of leaving trouble behind."
My throat tightened.
"My mother saved Matteo's life."
"Your mother complicated matters."
I felt anger flash through me.
"By preventing a murder?"
He went silent.
For one second, I thought he would hang up.
Instead, he said, "You should be careful what you accuse people of, Elena. Your mother wasn't."
I took a breath.
"And what happened to her?"
There was a long pause.
Then Luca said, "She spent the rest of her life looking over her shoulder."
My eyes filled.
"You knew?"
"Everybody knew she was frightened."
"Did you make her frightened?"
He ignored the question.
"Bring me the notebook, and we can finish this."
"What happens if I refuse?"
His voice became colder.
"You've already seen how easily somebody can find your front door."
Then the call ended.
For several seconds, I couldn't move.
Cars passed.
Somewhere nearby, a dog barked.
The ordinary city continued around us.
But the world I had known was gone.
I looked at Matteo.
"He admitted he had the page."
"He strongly implied it."
"And he threatened me."
"Yes."
I swallowed.
"Is the recording enough?"
"Enough to take seriously. Enough to provide to investigators. We still need to establish everything that happened."
I looked at the old apartment building.
At the second-floor windows.
At the place where my mother had once watched me play.
For seventeen years, Luca had believed he could decide what happened to our family.
He had frightened my mother into leaving.
He had kept part of her warning.
And now he wanted her notebook.
I looked down at the faded blue cover.
"No."
Matteo turned toward me.
"What?"
"I'm not giving it to him."
"I didn't ask you to."
"I know."
My voice steadied.
"But I want him to understand that."
Matteo studied me.
"What are you thinking?"
I took a slow breath.
"He wants to meet. We shouldn't do it alone."
"Agreed."
"We need the police involved, and the evidence secured where he can't reach it."
Matteo nodded.
"Agreed."
"And I want Luca to know exactly why my mother was right."
He watched me for a long moment.
Then said, "What do you want to do?"
I looked at the notebook.
My mother's final warning.
The page someone had stolen.
The three scratches she had made with her own hands.
I had spent most of my life thinking courage meant not being afraid.
Now I knew better.
Courage meant deciding that fear wasn't going to make every choice for you.
I looked up.
"I'm going to tell him what she saw."
Matteo frowned.
"You don't know everything she saw."
"No."
I opened the notebook.
"But I think I know enough to make him tell us the rest."
And for the first time since Bellavita, I wasn't simply reacting to what Luca had done.
May you like
I was making a decision of my own.
One that would force the truth into the open.
