Chapter 3 - Eight Months Earlier
At six in the morning, Mercy General smelled like burnt coffee and disinfectant.
Adrien sat alone in the cafeteria with a paper cup he had not touched and tried to reconstruct the last year without making himself the hero of it.
That was harder than he expected.
Eight months earlier, Elena had not vanished from a happy relationship. She had left from a strained one.
Adrien had been traveling four nights a week. When he was home, his phone stayed face up at dinner, always waiting for the next crisis. He had installed cameras around the brownstone without asking her. He had changed the locks after a threat and failed to give her the new code until she stood outside in the rain for twenty minutes.
He had apologized for that.
He had also done it again in three different forms.
Elena had worked as a physical therapist at St. Catherine's Rehabilitation Center. She liked ordinary things with almost stubborn devotion: grocery lists written on paper, cheap basil plants on the kitchen sill, Sunday mornings when nobody needed anything from them.
Adrien had loved those mornings and treated them like a hobby he could return to when the important work was done.
The last week before she left, she had asked him three times to come home for dinner.
The third time he had arrived after midnight.
She was sitting at the kitchen table in sweatpants, a mug between both hands.
"I can't keep being the place you visit," she had said.
He remembered being offended because the brownstone was in his name and he slept there more than anywhere else.
He understood now that she had not been talking about the address.
His mother called at 6:12.
Adrien watched the screen until it stopped.
At 6:14 she called again.
He answered.
"Ma."
"Where are you?"
"You know where."
"I know what Marco told your uncle. I want to hear it from you."
"Then hear this. I'm not discussing Elena with the family."
Silence.
Teresa Moretti had many kinds of silence. There was the silence she used at church when she did not approve of the priest. The silence she used at dinners when two men were making a mistake and she wanted them to finish making it. And there was this one.
The one that meant she knew more than she wanted to say.
"Ma."
"Come home."
"Did you know Elena was pregnant?"
Another silence.
Adrien stood so quickly the chair legs scraped tile.
"Did you know?"
"Not at first."
His grip tightened around the phone.
"When?"
"After she left."
"How long after?"
"Adrien—"
"How long?"
"Two weeks."
He closed his eyes.
Around him, a resident in green scrubs peeled the lid off yogurt. A security guard laughed at something on television. The world continued with obscene normalcy.
"Who told you?"
"She did."
Adrien opened his eyes.
"You talked to her."
"Once."
"And you said nothing."
Teresa's voice hardened. "Because she made me promise."
"Everybody made promises except me, apparently."
"You were not safe to tell."
That hurt more coming from his mother.
"Explain."
"Not over the phone."
He almost laughed.
"You all spent twenty years teaching me never to say anything over the phone. Now that rule is suddenly convenient."
"Adrien."
"Was she threatened?"
Teresa did not answer.
"Was she?"
"Come home. Alone."
The line went dead.
He found Marco asleep in a chair outside Elena's room, chin on his chest. Adrien kicked the toe of his shoe.
Marco woke instantly.
"I need a car."
"Where?"
"My mother's."
Marco stood. "I'll come."
"No."
"If this is about the summit—"
"It's not."
Marco looked at the room door. "Then it's about her."
"Stay here."
"You trust me now?"
Adrien held his gaze.
"No."
Marco absorbed that without flinching.
Adrien continued, "But she trusted you once, and right now that's enough for me to leave you on this floor."
It was not forgiveness. It was barely confidence.
But Marco nodded.
Before Adrien left, he went into Elena's room.
The lights were low. The baby slept in the clear bassinet beside her bed.
Elena opened her eyes when he approached.
"Where are you going?"
He could have lied. He almost did, out of habit.
"To my mother's. She knew you were pregnant."
Elena's expression changed.
"You called Teresa?"
"She called me."
"Adrien, don't go there angry."
"I'm not angry."
She gave him a tired look.
He corrected himself.
"I'm trying not to be only angry."
That was closer to truth.
Elena reached over the bassinet and adjusted the baby's blanket.
"Your mother helped me."
He stared at her.
"What?"
"She helped me once. That's all I'm saying until I understand who sent that message."
"You think my mother sent it?"
"No."
"Who, then?"
Elena looked at him.
"I don't know. That's the problem. Every person around you has two faces, Adrien. One for the table and one for the hallway."
"Not everybody."
"You included."
He started to answer and stopped.
The baby made a tiny sound in her sleep.
Adrien looked down.
"Does she have a name?"
Elena's face softened despite herself.
"Sofia."
His breath caught.
His grandmother's name.
Elena saw him understand.
"I picked it before I left," she said. "Back when I still thought I'd tell you."
Adrien stood beside the bassinet with one hand on the clear plastic edge.
"I'm going to my mother's," he said. "Then I'm coming back."
Elena closed her eyes.
"You always come back after the meeting."
He understood the accusation.
This time, he made a different promise.
"No meetings."
At his mother's house forty minutes later, Teresa Moretti opened the front door before he knocked.
She wore a gray robe and no makeup. She looked older than she had at Christmas.
"Come in," she said.
Adrien stepped inside.
May you like
Teresa locked the door behind him.
Then she said, "Your father knew about the baby before he died."
