Chapter 6 - HER GRANDMOTHER WAS IN THE HOSPITAL AGAIN
August arrived with thick heat and afternoon thunderstorms.
June’s health began to trouble her again.
She had lived with a chronic heart condition for years. Most days she managed it with medication, careful routines, and regular appointments.
But lately, climbing the stairs left her breathless.
Sometimes she needed to sit down after carrying groceries from the car.
She hid those moments from Sophie when she could.
May noticed anyway.
One morning, June stood in the kitchen holding a glass of water.
Her face had gone pale.
“June?”
“Just a little dizzy.”
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sit.”
June obeyed.
Sophie appeared in the doorway, carrying her school sweater.
“Nana?”
June forced a smile.
“I’m all right, sweetheart.”
But Sophie had heard those words before.
Her mother had said them during her illness.
The memory lived inside her in a place too deep for comforting explanations.
“Do you need the hospital?”
“Maybe the doctor should check me,” June admitted.
May reached for the phone.
Within an hour, June was receiving medical care, and Sophie was sitting beside May in a waiting room, holding the blue ribbon from her graduation.
May had brought her there because she knew Sophie would be frightened if she simply disappeared from sight.
June’s physician recommended further testing and observation.
May called Luca.
He answered before the second ring.
“Is Sophie okay?”
“She’s safe. June’s having some heart trouble.”
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital.”
“I’ll come.”
“Luca, listen to me. We don’t need you making decisions.”
“I know.”
“June’s doctors are handling her care. I’m taking Sophie home tonight.”
“Of course.”
There was a pause.
“Then what are you coming for?”
Luca looked at his empty office.
“To be there if you need anything.”
May considered that.
“Fine. Come alone.”
The hospital waiting room smelled of coffee, disinfectant, and rain-damp jackets.
Sophie sat in a chair with her feet tucked underneath her.
When Luca entered, she ran toward him.
He crouched, and she stopped directly in front of him.
“Is Nana going to die?”
The question struck him with physical force.
He didn’t know how to answer without lying.
“I don’t know exactly what’s happening,” he said. “The doctors are helping her. May knows more than I do.”
Sophie looked over her shoulder.
May approached.
“Nana is stable,” she said. “They’re keeping her here for tests, but she’s talking and asking about you.”
Sophie nodded.
Then she looked at Luca.
“Can I stay at your house until Nana comes home?”
He felt May watching him.
A year earlier, he would have solved the problem by offering his biggest guest room, a driver, and a staff member to take care of everything.
But June had already made arrangements.
May was family.
May knew Sophie’s routines, her fears, the nightlight she preferred, and the way she needed a story before bed.
“No, sweetheart,” Luca said gently. “You’re staying with Aunt May.”
Sophie’s face fell.
“Why?”
“Because Nana planned for that. And May is someone you know and trust.”
“Don’t you want me?”
He looked at her.
“Very much.”
“Then why can’t I?”
“Because wanting something doesn’t mean I get to decide what’s best for you.”
She stared at the floor.
“My mommy went to the hospital.”
“I know.”
“She said she’d come home when they fixed her.”
Luca felt his throat tighten.
May placed a hand on Sophie’s shoulder.
“Your mother was very sick, sweetheart.”
Sophie looked up again.
“Did I make Nana sick?”
“No,” Luca said immediately.
“I asked her to iron my dress twice because the bow wasn’t straight.”
“That didn’t make her sick.”
“Sometimes I wake her up when I have bad dreams.”
“That didn’t make her sick either.”
“Then why does everybody leave?”
He could hear the vending machine humming behind them.
A nurse walked past carrying paperwork.
Somewhere beyond the waiting room, a telephone rang.
Luca wanted to give Sophie a promise strong enough to erase every frightening memory she carried.
He could have told her June would come home.
He could have promised nobody would ever leave her again.
But he couldn’t make either promise honestly.
“Sometimes people get sick,” he said quietly. “Sometimes terrible things happen even when nobody did anything wrong.”
Sophie began to cry.
Luca remained kneeling in front of her.
“You didn’t make your mother sick,” he continued. “You didn’t make your nana sick. And you don’t have to earn the right to be loved by being good all the time.”
She wiped her cheeks with both sleeves.
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She considered that.
Then she reached for his hand.
For a few moments, they sat together without speaking.
May watched from beside them.
For the first time since meeting Luca Moretti, she wondered whether he was beginning to understand that being dependable had very little to do with being powerful.
That night, Luca went home to a house that had never felt so empty.
His waterfront townhouse was filled with expensive furniture he had barely chosen.
A marble kitchen.
A dining table that seated twelve.
A terrace overlooking the bay.
Bedrooms nobody used.
He opened a cabinet and found a box of pancake mix Sophie had insisted he keep for the next time they cooked.
The sight of it hurt.
On the refrigerator was a drawing she had made during an earlier supervised visit.
Three cups stood in a kitchen window.
One small cup for Sophie.
One flowered cup for June.
One large blue cup for Luca.
She had drawn his cup slightly crooked because, she’d explained, he wasn’t very good at washing dishes.
He stood looking at it until his phone rang.
Elena.
“We’ve located more of the Harbor Point records,” she said.
“What did you find?”
“Evidence that warnings were documented before the fire.”
He closed his eyes.
“About the electrical system?”
“Yes. And emergency access.”
“Did they reach management?”
“Some reached Dominic’s department. We need to determine exactly what you received.”
Luca sat down.
“And Benjamin Bell?”
Elena paused.
“There are references to his complaints. June may have documents we haven’t seen.”
He looked at Sophie’s drawing.
“What if I signed the deferral after those warnings?”
“Then that becomes part of the investigation.”
“What if Dominic hid them?”
“That matters. But it doesn’t automatically erase your responsibility for signing without checking.”
He rubbed his face.
“I know.”
Elena’s voice softened.
“Luca, you’ve spent most of your life paying people to make problems disappear. This one will not disappear.”
He looked at the crooked blue cup.
“I don’t want it to.”
For the first time, he meant it.
June was discharged five days later with medication adjustments, follow-up appointments, and strict instructions to rest.
She hated the instructions.
May reminded her that disagreeing with a doctor wasn’t the same as proving him wrong.
Sophie became an enthusiastic supervisor.
She brought June water, checked that her slippers were beside the chair, and announced whenever someone asked Nana to do something that involved standing up.
“Doctor’s orders,” she would say, planting both hands on her hips.
June laughed more often than she had in months.
But the laughter didn’t erase the problem sitting inside an old metal tin in her bedroom closet.
The tin had belonged to Ben.
Before his death, he kept electrical components in it, along with screws, spare fuses, and the small objects he rescued from broken radios.
Afterward, June used it for the documents she couldn’t bear to throw away.
Ben’s work badge.
His last birthday card.
Letters from Clare.
And copies of the warnings he had submitted about the warehouse.
One afternoon, while Sophie was at May’s house, June asked May to bring the tin to the kitchen.
She spread the papers across the table.
There were three letters.
The first concerned faulty emergency lighting in a service corridor.
The second described overloaded circuits near a storage area.
The third requested an immediate inspection after a night-shift worker reported seeing sparks near damaged wiring.
Ben had written carefully.
He didn’t use dramatic language.
He recorded dates, equipment numbers, the location of each problem, and the names of people who had witnessed it.
At the bottom of the final letter, he had added a handwritten sentence.
My wife is expecting our first child. I want everyone working these shifts to get home safely.
June pressed her fingers against those words.
For seven years, she had remembered the sentence almost every day.
She had also remembered the response from the company’s operations office.
A stamped receipt acknowledging the warning.
Received September 4, 2020.
Fourteen days before Ben died.
She had sent copies to the company after the fire.
They replied with sympathy.
Then requests for patience.
Then carefully worded statements saying the matter had been addressed through established processes.
Eventually, they stopped replying.
June looked at May.
“I’m tired of carrying this.”
May pulled out a chair.
“Then don’t carry it alone.”
“I’m not giving it to Luca just because Sophie loves him.”
“That’s not what I’m suggesting.”
June closed the tin.
“Then what?”
“We speak to an attorney who represents us. We find out what these papers can prove. And we decide what to do because Ben deserves answers, not because Luca wants to feel better.”
June sat silently for a while.
May you like
Then she nodded.
It was the first decision about Harbor Point that had made her feel less helpless in years.
