Chapter 5 - The Missing Hour
Isabella met the investigator at the hospital records office the next day.
The blue box was evidence now. She could look at the contents, but she couldn’t take them home.
A woman named Agent Ruth Calder laid the papers out on a conference table. She had a calm voice and the tired eyes of someone who had spent too many years finding the harm hidden inside ordinary forms.
“The label on that second box was handwritten,” Calder said. “We’re testing it. The files inside are copies.”
“Copies of what?” Isabella asked.
“A transfer request, a discharge summary, and an intake record from a private care agency.”
Mara leaned forward. “Which agency?”
“Harbor Family Services.”
Isabella knew the name. The foundation had once considered funding them. She had rejected the proposal because they wouldn’t explain their placement fees.
The discharge summary listed a baby boy as transferred from the hospital at 4:08 a.m. The death certificate for Isabella’s son was signed at 5:01 a.m.
“That’s less than an hour,” Isabella said.
Calder kept her finger on the first page. “The records may refer to two different babies. We need the originals and the people who handled them.”
“Where’s Lena?”
“Recovering. She remembered someone asking for the file number before the attack. We’re checking who had access to her office.”
Isabella stared at the name beside the agency’s intake stamp.
C. Moretti.
“Dante’s father was Carlo,” she said. “He died five years ago.”
“Anyone else with that initial?”
“Dante’s aunt Celia.”
Celia Moretti had managed the family’s charitable donations before Isabella took over. She had been kind after the birth, arriving at the hospital with food and telling Isabella to rest. Isabella could still picture her standing at the end of the bed, holding the tiny blue blanket.
Mara noticed the change in her face.
“What are you thinking?”
“Celia was there.”
Calder wrote down the name.
That afternoon, Isabella returned to the guesthouse and found Dante waiting outside the gate. He stayed beside his car when she stepped out of Elias’s sedan.
“I didn’t move that box last night,” he said.
“It was accessed with your code.”
“I gave Celia access years ago.”
“Why would she need our son’s things?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could have told me she had the code.”
“I didn’t know this was about him until today.”
Isabella stopped walking.
“What do you know, Dante?”
He looked at her stomach, then away.
“I know my aunt has lied to me before.”
“About what?”
“She told me a foundation contractor was skimming money. I asked for proof. She promised she’d bring it.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
Isabella felt the ground shift under her.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Our son had just died. You could barely get out of bed.”
“I was grieving. I could still hear you.”
Dante took the words without arguing.
“My aunt said she handled it,” he said. “I let her.”
A black SUV turned slowly onto the street. Dante saw it at the same moment Elias did.
“Inside,” Elias called.
The SUV passed the gate, then sped up.
Dante pulled open the passenger door of his car and grabbed an envelope from the seat.
“Celia left this at my office,” he said. “An hour ago.”
He handed it to Isabella.
Inside was a single photograph of a little boy blowing out three candles.
May you like
On the back, in Celia’s handwriting, were four words:
Keep her away from him.
