Chapter 5 - The White Veil
The suitcase had a false bottom. Luca found the seam beneath the lining and opened it with a narrow tool. Inside were folded medical papers, a birth bracelet, and a photograph of Elena holding a newborn wrapped in a yellow blanket.
Vincent took the photograph. Elena looked tired, frightened, and alive.
On the back, in her handwriting, were four words: Sofia, born October 12.
He counted the years without meaning to. Sofia would be four now.
"I have a daughter?" he said.
The room seemed to shrink around him.
Luca read the medical report. Elena had been admitted under an assumed name at a clinic outside Milwaukee. The records listed Vincent as the biological father and a healthy baby girl named Sofia Moretti.
A second document was a discharge note. The person authorized to collect the child was Daniel Bell.
Clara covered her mouth.
"Daniel brought a baby home?"
"Not to our home," Vincent said. "He must have hidden her."
Vanessa backed toward the stairs. "You can't believe a stack of old papers."
Vincent held up the birth bracelet. The name Sofia was written in blue ink. A tiny silver star had been sewn into the edge, the same star Elena used to stitch into every blanket she made.
"You told me Elena had no child," he said.
"She was pregnant when she left. I never knew what happened after that."
"You said she wasn't pregnant."
Vanessa looked toward the front door.
A guard quietly locked it.
Then Clara noticed something on the photograph. Elena was wearing a hospital band with a second name written beneath the first.
The name was not Elena Moretti.
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The birth bracelet had a tiny hospital code printed on the back. Luca photographed it and sent it to the clinic records office. Vincent kept staring at the baby's photograph, trying to imagine four birthdays he had missed, four scraped knees, four nights when a little girl might have asked where her father was.
It was Elena Shaw.
