Chapter 37
“She is beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“I am sorry I frightened you.”
“I believe you.”
“And I am sorry I looked at her as if she were an answer.”
I said nothing.
Sofia folded her hands.
“When you lose someone, you begin searching for them everywhere. In faces. In voices. In strangers crossing a street.”
Her eyes rested on Lily.
“But she is not Annie. She is Lily.”
“Yes.”
“I know that now.”
The apology eased something inside me.
Not everything.
Enough.
“You can visit her again,” I said. “When she is better.”
Sofia’s eyes filled.
“I would like that.”
A knock sounded.
Marco stood in the doorway holding a sealed evidence pouch.
“Mr. Moretti asked me to bring this to Hannah.”
“What is it?”
“We found it inside the metal box.”
He handed it to me.
Inside was a hospital bracelet.
The plastic had yellowed with age.
A name was printed across it.
BABY GIRL MORETTI.
Beneath the name was a date.
The same date as the first birth certificate.
Twenty-six years ago.
Sofia took a sharp breath.
I turned the bracelet over.
A second name had been written by hand on the inside.
Not Anna.
Not Annie.
Hannah.
I looked at Sofia.
She stared at the bracelet, unable to speak.
“That is not possible,” I said.
Marco shifted uneasily.
“There’s something else.”
He handed me a folded page.
May you like
It was a DNA laboratory report.
Recent.
