Chapter 5 - Three Knocks

Naomi turned off the kitchen light. Outside, another three knocks sounded, patient and evenly spaced. Through the peephole she saw a man in a gray delivery jacket holding a thin parcel. His eyes were fixed on the door handle, not the apartment number.

“No signature needed,” he called. “Just open up.”

“We didn’t order anything,” Naomi answered.

The man backed away. His footsteps moved toward the stairs, then stopped. Naomi called the building superintendent. He checked the hallway camera and said the visitor had arrived with another man, both wearing identical shoes.

Rosa pulled a metal tin from beneath the sink. Inside were two birth certificates, an unsigned affidavit, and a tiny gold bracelet. The paper smelled of old dust.

“Why keep it?” Naomi asked.

“Because one day you were going to ask. And I wanted to have something better than an apology.”

Alexander met them at a busy diner instead of his mansion. He arrived without a driver, looking like a man who had forgotten how to sleep. When Rosa described the fire, he listened without interrupting. Then he placed a childhood picture on the table. The girl held a stuffed rabbit with one bent ear.

Naomi knew the rabbit. Rosa had sewn its ear back together when she was seven.

“Lucy?” Alexander asked, barely breathing.

“Don’t call me that yet,” she said. “I need proof.”

“We’ll get it. Independently.”

He offered his phone with a list of reputable laboratories, and Naomi chose one at random. They agreed to give samples separately.

At the diner window, a dark SUV rolled past for the third time. Alexander noticed Naomi following it with her eyes.

“Vanessa knows more than she’s saying,” he told her.

“How much more?”

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The waitress at the diner refilled their coffee without asking who anyone was. Naomi wondered how many families around them were carrying secrets just as heavy. When the woman smiled and called her honey, Naomi nearly cried. Kindness without a price had suddenly become unfamiliar.

Before Alexander could answer, a message flashed across Rosa’s phone from a number she had blocked years ago: WE HAVE THE NURSE. BRING THE BRACELET BY SIX.