Chapter 2 - The Disappearance and the Search
Six years before St. Margaret’s, my wife Alina disappeared with our fourteen-month-old daughter, Sophia.
She left a handwritten note on our kitchen table.
I cannot do this anymore.
Please do not look for us.
Please let her be safe.
I ignored the first request.
I failed the second.
For two years, I searched.
Private investigators.
Lawyers.
Old contacts.
New contacts.
Border alerts that never produced anything.
Hospital searches.
Property records.
School records.
Every legal database money could reach and several it should not have.
Nothing.
Eventually, my longtime chief operating officer, Matteo Rizzo, told me the search had become dangerous.
“She does not want to be found.”
I remember where we stood.
My study.
Rain on the windows.
A glass of bourbon I had not touched.
“What does that matter?”
“It matters if finding her brings attention to Sophia.”
“I can protect them.”
Matteo had looked at me with the exhausted patience of a man who had known me since we were twenty.
“Marco. Maybe the protection is you stopping.”
I hated him for saying it.
Then I listened.
That decision lived in me like rust.
Not dramatic.
Quiet.
Always there.
I stopped sending men.
Stopped opening every anonymous tip.
Stopped asking border contacts whether a woman using another surname had traveled with a child whose age matched mine.
But I never stopped looking inside rooms.
Crowds.
Airports.
Restaurants.
Every small girl with dark curls.
Every woman whose walk looked briefly familiar from behind.
Six years.
Then I went to donate money to an orphanage.
Sister Catherine Doyle met me at the entrance.
Sixty-two.
Small.
White hair beneath a navy head covering.
Not technically a nun anymore, though everyone still called her Sister because apparently some titles outlive organizational charts.
She shook my hand firmly.
“Mr. Vitelli.”
“Sister Catherine.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“I was told photographs were not part of this.”
“They weren’t.”
She glanced toward the reporters.
“I have several theories involving board members who enjoy attention more than children enjoy heat.”
I almost smiled.
May you like
“I like you.”
“That would concern people who know you better.”
