Chapter 2
My daughter was waiting for me to answer.
"Mom?"
I set my purse beside the door and made myself walk into the kitchen.
Dario held a knife less than an arm's length from Sophie. I couldn't scream or rush forward and pull her away. A sudden move could put her in the middle of whatever happened next.
"We knew each other a long time ago," I said.
Graham watched my face. He didn't ask what was wrong. He stepped forward and laid a hand on Sophie's shoulder.
"You've had some cake. Why don't you go upstairs and try the headphones Grandma got you?"
"But Mom hasn't made a wish yet."
"It's your birthday. You get the wish." He kissed the top of her head. "Give us five minutes. We'll come up after Mom and I see our guest out."
Sophie reluctantly picked up her plate. As she passed Dario, he held out a beautifully wrapped box.
"Happy birthday."
"Sophie, don't—"
My voice came out too sharp. She stopped.
Dario kept his hand out. "It's only a music box. It plays the song your mother loved when she was young."
"You don't know what I liked as a child."
He smiled at me. "You're right. I only know what you liked at twenty-two."
Graham took the box and set it on the island. "She doesn't need your present."
Dario didn't argue. He let go and wished Sophie good night with the manners of an invited guest.
The moment she went upstairs, Graham moved between us.
"Tell me who you are and why you're in my house."
"I thought Audrey would at least have mentioned my name."
"She mentioned a coward who ran away before their wedding."
Dario's smile faded.
Only then did I realize Graham knew who he was. Not because I'd told him much. He'd remembered the face in a faded photograph I'd kept for seventeen years.
"Get out," I said.
"Of course." Dario put the cake knife beside the plate and wiped his fingers slowly on a napkin. "Before I go, though, we need to talk about the visitor you had today."
Graham frowned. "What visitor?"
"A woman who's been waiting underground for seventeen years."
Cold swept through me.
Dario looked straight at me. "Don't identify her. Rule the death an accident. Put drowning on the report. Once it's done, she can be cremated quickly."
"You know who was in that tank."
"I know more than you do."
"Then tell the police."
"They won't like my answers. Neither will you."
Graham turned toward me. I saw the questions in his eyes, and the hurt he couldn't hide as the past I'd kept from him walked into our kitchen.
Dario saw it too.
"So you never told your husband about Vivian," he said. "That hardly seems fair. He sleeps beside you without knowing why you won't go near the lake, or why you cry in the bathroom every May fourteenth."
Graham's jaw tightened. "Stay away from my wife."
"I've stayed away for seventeen years. She's still keeping my secrets."
Graham swung at him.
Dario seemed ready for it. He stepped aside and caught Graham's wrist. A chair scraped across the floor. I threw myself between them.
"Sophie is upstairs!"
Graham stopped. Dario let go and straightened his sleeve, his gaze shifting to the staircase.
"Mondays and Wednesdays, school ends at 3:20. Tuesdays, swimming practice finishes at 5:40. Her father usually picks her up on Fridays, unless his hospital schedule changes."
Everything inside me went still.
"If you touch her—"
"I don't hurt children," Dario cut in. "But not everyone in the Bellandi family has my patience. Put her name in the report, and you bring seventeen years of history back into the open. I may not be able to protect your family then."
"That's a threat."
"You've always been clever."
He took a business card from his coat and slid it under Sophie's unopened present.
"Give me an answer by tomorrow night."
After he left, Graham locked the door and checked every downstairs window. I didn't realize I was gripping the edge of the island until his car drove away. My knuckles had gone white.
"Who's Vivian?" Graham asked.
I checked the stairs to make sure Sophie hadn't come down. Then I told him about seventeen years ago: Vivian's call, Dario's disappearance, the three-word note, and the suspicion I'd never been able to say out loud.
Graham was quiet for a long time.
"You thought he might have had something to do with her disappearance, and you never told me?"
"I had no evidence. Back then I didn't even know what the Bellandi name meant."
Later I'd learned that his family started in shipping on the Chicago docks. They owned construction companies, restaurants, and a charitable foundation. The newspapers never openly called them the Mafia, but everyone in the city knew that a name's absence from an indictment didn't make its owner innocent.
"You knew you were afraid of him," Graham said.
"I did." I glanced at his reddened hand. "And I knew you'd go looking for him if I told you. The way you went after him just now."
He followed my gaze and slowly unclenched his fist.
"I didn't want my past to put you in danger."
When he looked up, the anger had gone. What remained was harder to face.
"You said you looked for him for a year."
I said nothing.
"Did you still love him then?"
"I don't know."
It was the most honest answer I had.
Seventeen years ago, I'd hated Dario, searched for him, and dreamed he would come back. Then I fell in love with Graham, and those feelings sank deeper and deeper. They hadn't vanished, but they weren't love anymore.
"And now?"
"Now I want to know what he did to Vivian."
Graham studied me, then wrapped his arms around me. His body was stiff with anger, but his hands held me steady.
"We call the police," he said. "Then Sophie goes to my sister's."
We called that night. Dario hadn't struck anyone, directly threatened to hurt anyone, or left evidence of a break-in. Sophie admitted she'd answered the doorbell herself. He'd said he was an old friend of mine, shown her photographs, and she'd invited him in to wait.
The officers took our statements and promised to contact the detective handling the remains.
After they left, Graham opened the music box. There was no photograph inside the lid, only a ballerina in a white dress. He wound it, and the piano piece I'd loved as a young woman played through our kitchen.
Under the base was a printed still from a security camera.
Sophie, backpack on, was walking out a side door at school.
The timestamp read 3:21 that afternoon.
On the back, someone had written one line.
By tomorrow night, keep her a woman without a name.