Chapter 6 - WHERE IS LILY MORETTI?
I read the messages twice before the words settled into meaning.
You should ask Dante why he never recognized his own daughter.
And ask him where Lily Moretti really is.
Kate took the phone from my hand.
“Don’t reply,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
I looked toward the hallway where Mia slept. The apartment had become too small for the questions suddenly filling it.
My father was still on the phone.
“Claire?” he said. “Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I should have told you years ago.”
“You should have told me before tonight.”
“I know.”
“Did Mom believe I was Adrian’s daughter?”
“She believed the clinic had made a mistake. She thought you and another baby had been switched in the records.”
“Not at birth?”
“I don’t know. She never explained enough for me to understand.”
“And Dante raised that other baby?”
“That’s what she feared.”
My hand went cold around the phone.
“Dad, what happened to the baby you think was me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“Then how can you say Dante raised her?”
“Because your mother found a photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“Dante holding a little girl. The picture was taken when she was about six months old. Your mother recognized the blanket.”
I glanced toward the living room, where Mia’s pink blanket lay folded over the arm of the sofa.
“What blanket?”
“The one you came home from the hospital in.”
I couldn’t speak.
Kate’s face had gone pale.
“My blanket?”
“Your mother kept it. She said the clinic had given it to her when you were born. Later, she saw the same blanket in the photograph of Dante and the child.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“No. But it frightened her.”
“Where is the photograph?”
“I don’t know. She kept it in the blue box.”
“And where is the box?”
“I told you, the storage unit was emptied.”
“By whom?”
“I never found out.”
I closed my eyes.
The story had become a series of doors, each opening onto another locked room.
A changed birth record.
A missing box.
A photograph.
A child named Lily.
And Dante, who had looked at me tonight as though some piece of the past had returned wearing my face.
“I’m going to the hospital,” I said.
“Claire, it’s late.”
“I need to speak to Dante.”
“You can’t trust him.”
“I don’t know whom I can trust.”
My father’s silence was answer enough.
“I’m bringing Mia to Kate’s sister,” I continued. “She lives nearby. I’ll call you when I know more.”
“Claire—”
“I’ll call you.”
I ended the conversation before he could say anything else.
Kate stood. “I’ll drive.”
“I can drive.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m angry.”
“You can be angry in the passenger seat.”
I almost smiled. “You’ve been waiting six years to say that.”
“I’ve been waiting six years for you to stop carrying everything alone.”
The words landed gently, but they stayed with me as we woke Mia.
She stirred when I touched her shoulder.
“Mommy?”
“It’s me.”
“Did Moonlight win again?”
“Not tonight.”
She opened her eyes halfway. “Where are we going?”
“To Aunt Nora’s house. You can sleep there.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to go back to the hospital.”
“Is the man okay?”
“I think he will be.”
“Tell him I said he should rest.”
“I will.”
She reached for me, and I lifted her carefully from the bed. Her head settled against my shoulder, warm and trusting.
For one moment, all the mysteries fell away.
She was my daughter. Whatever documents said, whatever names had been changed, whatever secrets adults had kept, that truth lived in every bedtime story, every scraped knee, every morning she climbed into my bed before sunrise.
I carried her to the car.
At Nora’s house, Mia woke enough to hug Kate’s sister and ask for water. Nora had two teenagers and a calm, welcoming home filled with the scent of cinnamon and laundry detergent. She promised to keep her phone nearby.
“Call me if she wakes,” I said.
Nora touched my arm. “She’ll be safe.”
I believed her.
That mattered.
At the hospital, the two men outside the ICU stood when they saw me. One stepped forward.
“Dr. Callahan.”
“Is he awake?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going in alone.”
The man glanced toward his colleague.
“Mr. Moretti asked that we allow you through.”
“Then allow me.”
He moved aside.
Dante was sitting slightly upright when I entered. A nurse had dimmed the lights, and the room held the quiet, artificial stillness of the early morning hours.
His eyes opened before I reached the bed.
“You came back.”
“I need answers.”
“I know.”
I placed my phone on the chair.
“Did you receive a message?”
“No.”
I turned the screen toward him.
He read the texts.
The color left his face.
“Where did you get this?”
“It was sent to me.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
He reached for the phone, but the movement pulled at his side. I steadied the device and let him read it again.
“Who has this number?” he asked.
“People who know my name, apparently.”
His jaw tightened.
“Don’t respond.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
I studied him.
“Where is Lily?”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“I don’t know.”
“That is not good enough.”
“I haven’t seen her in six years.”
The room seemed to contract.
“Why?”
“Because Lily was never mine to raise.”
I waited.
He closed his eyes.
“Adrian had a daughter. Everyone believed she was born at North Sound Women’s Clinic. After Adrian died, the clinic transferred custody records to Elena. A baby was placed with me temporarily because the family was considered unsafe.”
“Temporarily?”
“I was supposed to keep her until Elena could arrange a secure home.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Then where is she?”
“I gave her to the woman who was listed as her mother.”
“Her mother was missing.”
“That’s what we believed.”
His expression tightened with remembered uncertainty.
“Six months after Adrian’s death, a woman arrived with legal documents and photographs proving she was Lily’s mother. She knew details no stranger could have known. Elena verified the papers through a solicitor. The woman took the child.”
“Who was she?”
“Marisol Varela.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. She left Seattle. She told us she was taking Lily to California.”
“And you never checked?”
“I tried. The address was false.”
I stared at him.
“You lost a child and never found her?”
His eyes filled with shame.
“I searched for years.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Not at first.”
“Why?”
“Because Adrian’s death had not been investigated honestly. I believed someone inside the department was connected to the people we were looking for. I didn’t know who I could trust.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It was not.”
“But you expect me to believe you simply handed a baby to a stranger?”
“No.”
His voice broke on the last word.
“I expect you to believe that I made the worst decision of my life, and that I have lived with it every day since.”
I looked away.
The anger in me had nowhere simple to go.
“What does Lily have to do with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew about my name in the clinic records.”
His face changed.
“Who told you?”
“Your letter.”
“I never wrote that I knew you were Adrian’s daughter.”
“You wrote that my name appeared in records connected to the clinic.”
“I found your name in a report. I didn’t understand the connection.”
“And you still stayed away.”
“Yes.”
“Even after you saw me with a baby?”
“I didn’t know the baby was yours.”
“But you suspected.”
“Yes.”
The admission was quiet.
I folded my arms.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Because I thought the people watching the clinic were still searching for Adrian’s child. If you were that child, contact would expose you.”
“You decided that without speaking to me.”
“Yes.”
“Your decisions keep ruining my life.”
He accepted the accusation.
“I know.”
I walked toward the window.
Seattle was beginning to pale beneath the clouds. Dawn softened the buildings, turning wet rooftops silver. Somewhere below, an ambulance arrived, its lights spinning silently against the glass.
“My father says my mother found a photograph of you holding a baby wrapped in my hospital blanket.”
Dante went completely still.
“Your hospital blanket?”
“That’s what he said.”
“I never held your baby.”
“Then whose baby did you hold?”
“I held Lily.”
“Where?”
“North Sound.”
“When?”
He looked toward the ceiling as he searched his memory.
“About six years ago.”
“Exactly?”
“Six years and three months, perhaps.”
“That was before Mia was born.”
“I know.”
“Was the baby wearing a pink blanket?”
“Yes.”
“Did it have a small embroidered moon in the corner?”
His eyes widened.
“Yes.”
The answer moved through me with terrible certainty.
My mother had kept the blanket because she believed it belonged to me.
Dante had held a baby wrapped in it.
But that did not mean I had been switched with Lily. It meant someone had carried my blanket into a clinic where another child was being kept.
Unless—
“Did you see the baby’s face?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember her?”
“I remember dark hair. Brown eyes. A small birthmark beneath her left ear.”
I stopped breathing.
Mia had a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark beneath her left ear.
I had kissed it every night when she was an infant.
Dante’s gaze locked on mine.
“Claire.”
I reached for the chair and sat.
“Mia has that birthmark.”
He stared at me.
The monitor beside him quickened.
“For years,” he said slowly, “I believed Lily had inherited it from Adrian. He had one in the same place.”
“Are you saying Mia is Lily?”
“No.”
May you like
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying the information is wrong somewhere.”
