Chapter 4 - Two Babies in One Photograph
I arrived at the Moretti house at eight the next morning.
Calling it a house was ridiculous.
It sat behind iron gates on several acres of land outside the city, surrounded by trees and security cameras.
The building itself was all stone, tall windows, and restrained old-world elegance.
Not flashy.
Just expensive in a way that made numbers meaningless.
Rafael met me at the door.
“Mr. Moretti is upstairs.”
“With Leo?”
“Yes.”
I heard the baby before we reached the staircase.
Crying.
The sound went through me.
I hated how instinctively my body responded.
Dominic stood in a bright nursery.
His jacket was gone.
His tie was loose.
His hair looked as if he had been running his hands through it for hours.
Leo was in his arms.
“I'm here,” I said softly.
The baby turned.
The transformation was immediate.
His crying became a hiccup.
Then silence.
Dominic looked exhausted.
“This is getting humiliating.”
I smiled.
“For you or him?”
“Me.”
Leo reached.
Dominic sighed and handed him over.
“Traitor.”
Leo touched my face.
Then buried his head against my shoulder.
Something inside me broke open.
Not pain exactly.
Recognition.
I had never met him before yesterday, yet holding him felt oddly natural.
Dominic watched me.
“He thinks you're her.”
The words hurt more than I expected.
“I'm not.”
“I know.”
“Does he?”
“No.”
I looked down at Leo.
“He's too young to understand.”
“He understands absence.”
There was no answer to that.
Dominic walked toward a small desk.
An envelope rested there.
My name was written on it.
ELINA VALDEZ
The handwriting was unfamiliar.
But something about the curve of the letters looked almost like mine.
“She wrote that?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I don't know.”
“How did no one find it?”
“It was inside a book.”
He held up a children's storybook.
“Elena used to read to Leo.”
My throat tightened.
I sat down.
Dominic remained standing.
“You should read it alone.”
“No.”
He looked surprised.
“If Elena wrote about your family, you deserve to hear it.”
Dominic's expression became complicated.
He sat across from me.
I opened the envelope.
Inside were several pages.
The first line destroyed whatever remained of my old life.
Dear Elina,
You don't know me, but I have spent the last three months trying to find you.
I kept reading.
Elena explained that she had always known she was adopted.
Her parents had been loving but knew little about the circumstances.
After her adoptive mother died, Elena discovered an envelope hidden among family documents.
Inside was a hospital bracelet.
BABY VALDEZ.
There was also a handwritten note.
For her safety, never contact Marisol.
Elena had begun searching.
She found my mother's name.
Then discovered Marisol had died four years earlier.
She found me.
My employment records.
My apartment.
Even a photograph from a charity event Orelio had hosted.
Elena had seen my face.
Her face.
She had known.
I couldn't continue.
Dominic took the page.
His eyes moved over the writing.
“Elena knew.”
“For months.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't she contact me?”
Dominic continued reading.
Then stopped.
“What?”
He handed the letter back.
I read the next paragraph.
I wanted to walk into Orelio the moment I saw your photograph. I wanted to ask whether you hate black coffee the way I do, whether you have the same scar near your left knee, whether you sneeze twice when sunlight hits your face. I wanted to know everything.
I froze.
Dominic noticed.
“What?”
I looked at him.
“I sneeze twice.”
Something shifted in his face.
I touched my knee.
A thin scar ran across it from a childhood bicycle accident.
My mother had always said I got it when I was five.
Twins didn't share acquired scars.
Of course not.
But Elena writing about one meant something else.
“How could she know about the scar?”
Dominic took the letter.
The next lines answered us.
There is an old photograph of us together when we were almost three. We were not separated at birth, Elina. Whatever you were told is wrong.
I stood so quickly Leo startled.
“No.”
Dominic rose.
“Elina.”
“My mother said the other baby died during delivery.”
“She lied.”
“She raised us together?”
“Apparently.”
“For three years?”
My memories began at four.
Fragments.
Sunlight.
A yellow kitchen.
My mother's voice.
A child laughing.
I had always assumed the child was a neighbor.
I pressed one hand against my mouth.
“Oh God.”
The letter continued.
Elena had found records suggesting the twins lived with Marisol for nearly three years.
Then something happened.
One child—Elena—was transferred through a private adoption agency.
Not legally.
Not at first.
The formal records were created months later.
Elena had located a man who once worked at St. Agnes Women's Hospital.
He agreed to speak with her.
His name was Dr. Samuel Greer.
But before the meeting, he disappeared.
Elena wrote:
If anything happens to me, find Greer. And don't trust the first story you hear about our separation. Someone paid a great deal of money to erase us.
Dominic went completely still.
I looked at him.
“Did she ever mention Greer?”
“No.”
“She was doing all this alone.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He stared at the pages.
“Because she knew what I would do if I thought someone was threatening her.”
“What would you do?”
His eyes met mine.
“Everything.”
For the first time, I understood why she might have hidden it.
The final page contained an address.
A storage facility.
Unit 4172.
The same number on my mother's old hospital card.
My heart pounded.
“That's not a coincidence.”
“No.”
Dominic reached for his phone.
“We go now.”
The storage facility stood forty minutes away in an industrial neighborhood.
Unit 4172 had been rented under Marisol Valdez's name.
Paid in advance for thirty years.
The manager stared at the documents we had brought.
“She hasn't accessed it since 2001.”
My throat tightened.
The lock was old.
The key card from my mother's box contained a tiny metal key tucked beneath a sliding plastic panel.
I had never noticed it.
It opened the unit.
Inside were three cardboard boxes.
A child's red coat.
A wooden rocking horse.
And a suitcase.
I approached slowly.
Dominic stayed behind me.
The first box contained photographs.
Hundreds.
My mother.
Me.
And Elena.
Together.
Two identical little girls with dark hair.
At a playground.
In a bathtub full of bubbles.
Wearing matching Halloween costumes.
Sleeping against each other on a sofa.
I sank to the floor.
“She was real.”
Dominic crouched beside me.
“Yes.”
“She was with me.”
“Yes.”
“And I forgot her.”
“You were little.”
Tears blurred the photographs.
One picture showed us holding hands beneath a handwritten date.
Elina & Elena — 2 years, 8 months.
I pressed it against my chest.
“How do you forget your own sister?”
“You don't choose what a frightened child remembers.”
I looked at Dominic.
“How do you know I was frightened?”
He pointed.
At the back of the photograph.
There was writing.
My mother's handwriting.
The last summer before everything changed. Before they found us.
I stared at the sentence.
“They.”
Dominic's face hardened.
We opened the second box.
Documents.
Hospital files.
Bank statements.
Letters.
The third contained an old cassette recorder and several tapes.
One tape had a date.
Three days before Elena was taken away.
Dominic found batteries in the facility office.
The recorder crackled when he pressed play.
For several seconds there was only static.
Then my mother's younger voice filled the room.
“If someone finds this, my name is Marisol Valdez.”
I grabbed Dominic's arm.
The recording continued.
“I have two daughters. Elena and Elina. They are almost three.”
My mother's voice broke.
“A man came to the house tonight.”
Static.
“He told me I had to choose.”
My breathing stopped.
“He said one girl would be taken somewhere safe, and I could keep the other. If I refused, neither would stay with me.”
Dominic's eyes darkened.
Then my mother said the name.
And Dominic went rigid beside me.
“The man said he worked for Carlo Moretti.”
I turned.
“Moretti?”
Dominic looked as shocked as I felt.
The recording hissed.
My mother's voice continued.
“I don't know who Carlo Moretti is.”
Dominic did.
His answer came barely above a whisper.
“My father.”
And suddenly the mystery was no longer buried inside my family.
May you like
It was buried inside his.
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