Chapter 2 - The Photograph
Vincent did not sleep.
At 2:17 in the morning, he sat alone in his study with Frank Bell’s photograph beneath a brass desk lamp.
The house was silent.
Lily had fallen asleep hours earlier after asking six questions Vincent had answered badly.
Was Frank really Grandpa?
Why did Grandma have his picture?
Why did Frank look sad?
Why didn’t Daddy remember him?
Was Daddy angry?
Could they invite Frank for pancakes?
Vincent had told her they would talk in the morning.
He had no idea what he intended to say.
He turned the photograph over again.
May 1989.
Vinnie finally learned.
The handwriting bothered him.
So did the driveway.
Vincent remembered the red bicycle clearly.
He remembered his mother’s voice.
He remembered falling.
He remembered a man lifting him from the pavement.
Not a face.
A sensation.
Strong arms.
The smell of tobacco and soap.
A deep voice saying, “Don’t look at the blood. Look at me.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
Nothing.
Memory refused to cooperate.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk.
Inside sat one of his mother’s old albums.
He rarely opened them.
Photographs were dangerous in a different way than guns.
Guns did what you expected.
Photographs waited.
He removed the album.
Christmases.
Birthdays.
Family dinners.
His mother appeared in almost every photograph.
Vincent appeared in fewer.
There were pictures of cousins, uncles, neighbors, men who had worked for the family and disappeared before Vincent was old enough to understand why.
One thing became obvious after fifteen minutes.
There were no photographs of his father.
Not one.
That itself was strange.
His mother had told him his father left when Vincent was five.
Then, years later, she told him the man had died somewhere in Florida.
He had never questioned the lack of pictures.
As a child, he assumed she destroyed them because she hated him.
As an adult, Vincent stopped caring.
Or convinced himself he had.
A floorboard creaked behind him.
Vincent turned.
Lily stood in the doorway wearing pajamas decorated with tiny yellow stars.
“What are you doing?”
“Go back to bed.”
“You’re looking for Grandpa.”
Vincent exhaled.
“Lily.”
She walked in.
He almost told her to leave again.
Instead, he watched her climb into the chair across from him.
Her eyes landed on the album.
“That’s where I saw him.”
Vincent’s head lifted.
“This album?”
She nodded.
“Show me.”
Lily stood, walked around the desk, and flipped several pages.
Then stopped.
“There.”
Vincent looked.
A Christmas photograph.
1987.
He recognized his mother immediately.
He recognized himself sitting cross-legged near the tree.
There was no Frank.
Vincent frowned.
“He’s not here.”
Lily pointed toward the edge.
A man’s hand rested on the back of Vincent’s chair.
Only the hand and part of an arm were visible.
Vincent stared at it.
“That could be anyone.”
Lily shook her head.
“No. There was another one.”
She flipped backward.
A photograph had been removed.
Two small paper corners still held the empty rectangle.
Vincent felt his pulse change.
“Was it here?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When did you see it?”
“A long time ago.”
“How long?”
She shrugged.
“Before summer.”
“Who took it out?”
“I don’t know.”
Vincent stared at the empty space.
Only four people had regular access to his study.
Vincent.
His housekeeper.
His security chief.
Lily.
His mother’s sister, Teresa, had visited twice that year but never entered the study alone.
At least not that he remembered.
“Go back to bed.”
Lily’s voice softened.
“Are you mad at him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“You looked mad.”
“I was.”
“Why?”
Vincent looked at her.
Because the dead should stay dead.
Because strangers should not know your childhood.
Because fathers did not disappear for thirty years and then sweep floors near their granddaughters.
He said none of those things.
“I don’t like surprises.”
Lily considered this.
“You hate surprise birthdays too.”
“Yes.”
“So maybe this is like a really bad surprise birthday.”
Despite himself, Vincent nearly smiled.
Nearly.
“Bed.”
She kissed his cheek.
Then stopped at the door.
“Daddy?”
“What?”
“Frank never told me he was Grandpa.”
Vincent looked up.
“He didn’t?”
“No.”
“Then why did you call him that?”
Lily frowned like the answer was obvious.
“Because I figured it out.”
“How?”
“You have his nose.”
She left.
Vincent sat very still.
At seven the next morning, Frank Bell was walking toward the employee entrance of St. Augustine Academy when a black sedan pulled to the curb.
Vincent stepped out.
Frank stopped.
He looked tired.
“Mr. Moretti.”
“Get in.”
Frank glanced toward the school.
“I have a shift.”
“They’ll manage.”
“People notice when I disappear.”
Vincent opened the rear door.
“Then don’t make this dramatic.”
Frank gave him a look that would have been almost funny under different circumstances.
“You dragged me into a storage closet during a fundraiser.”
“Get in.”
Frank did.
Vincent sat opposite him.
The sedan pulled away.
Frank looked out the window.
“You shouldn’t involve the school.”
“I haven’t.”
“Your daughter attends there.”
“I know where my daughter goes.”
Frank rubbed one thumb across the knuckles of his other hand.
Vincent noticed the scar near his wrist.
Old.
White.
“You’re going to answer questions today.”
Frank remained silent.
Vincent slid the photograph across the seat.
The one with the bicycle.
“Who took it?”
Frank looked down.
“I did.”
Vincent felt something inside him twist.
“Where?”
“You know where.”
“No. I know where I think it was.”
“Your house.”
“Which house?”
Frank looked at him.
“The one on 81st.”
Vincent froze.
His childhood home had been on East 81st Street.
It had been sold when he was nine.
Most people associated the Moretti family with Brooklyn.
Later, Staten Island.
Eventually Manhattan.
Very few knew about the 81st Street house.
Fewer knew Vincent had lived there.
“You worked for my family?”
“No.”
“Friend of my mother?”
Frank almost smiled.
“Something like that.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“You said you took the photograph. That means you were there.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Frank looked out the window again.
Vincent’s patience broke.
“Stop staring through the goddamn glass and answer me.”
Frank turned back.
“You want every answer immediately because that’s how your life works now.”
“My life has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.”
Vincent stared at him.
Frank continued.
“You give an order and people move. You ask a question and somebody answers. That probably feels normal to you.”
“It works.”
“Not with the past.”
Vincent’s voice hardened.
“You do not know enough about my life to lecture me.”
Frank’s expression changed.
Sadness again.
Always sadness.
“You’d be surprised.”
Vincent leaned back.
“Let me explain what I know.”
Frank waited.
“You knew Lily before the fundraiser.”
“Yes.”
“You recognized me.”
“Yes.”
“You kept photographs of me as a child.”
“Yes.”
“You were inside my childhood home.”
“Yes.”
“You know things about me you shouldn’t know.”
“Yes.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed.
“And you expect me not to assume you’re dangerous.”
Frank nodded slowly.
“That part I understand.”
Vincent studied him.
“Why didn’t you approach me?”
Frank looked surprised.
“Would you have listened?”
“No.”
“There’s your answer.”
The sedan stopped at a red light.
Vincent looked at the photograph again.
“Lily said you never told her you were her grandfather.”
“I didn’t.”
“Is she wrong?”
Frank did not move.
Vincent waited.
A horn sounded behind them.
The sedan continued.
Frank finally said, “I never asked that child for anything.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I never used her to get close to you.”
“Not the question.”
“I never intended for her to know.”
Vincent’s voice dropped.
“Then what is the answer?”
Frank pressed his lips together.
Nothing.
Vincent stared at him with growing fury.
Then Frank reached into his coat.
He removed another photograph.
This one showed Vincent at perhaps four years old, asleep on a sofa.
A man’s hand rested lightly on his chest.
Vincent took the photograph.
The sofa.
He remembered it.
Brown fabric.
Terrible pattern.
His mother had hated it.
“You took this too?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Frank looked at Vincent for a long moment.
“Because I thought I’d have more time.”
Vincent’s eyes lifted.
The words landed harder than he expected.
More time for what?
He almost asked.
Instead he studied the photograph.
The room around the sleeping child contained a detail that made Vincent stop breathing.
On the wall hung a small framed watercolor of a sailboat.
His mother had painted it herself while pregnant.
She never displayed it after leaving the 81st Street house.
Vincent knew because he had found it years later packed inside a trunk.
No employee would have photographed him there casually.
No distant acquaintance would have stood over him sleeping.
Vincent looked at Frank.
“Who were you in that house?”
Frank’s jaw tightened.
“Vincent.”
It was the first time he had used his name.
Not Mr. Moretti.
Vincent.
The familiarity made Vincent’s skin crawl.
“Don’t.”
Frank looked away.
Vincent grabbed his wrist.
Frank winced.
Vincent loosened his grip but did not release him.
“You know what my mother told me about my father?”
Frank said nothing.
“She said he left.”
Frank’s eyes shut.
Vincent watched.
“She said he got tired of responsibility.”
Frank’s face tightened.
“She said he ran.”
“Stop.”
Vincent went still.
It was the first emotion Frank had allowed into his voice.
Not sadness.
Pain.
Vincent released his wrist.
“My father’s name was Francesco Moretti.”
Frank looked at him.
Vincent continued.
“He disappeared when I was five.”
Frank’s eyes were wet now.
“He died later.”
Silence.
Vincent leaned forward.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
Frank did not.
Vincent waited.
“Tell me.”
Frank’s voice was rough.
“I can’t.”
Vincent stared.
That was not confirmation.
Not technically.
But some answers did not need words.
The sedan rolled through Manhattan traffic while Vincent Moretti sat across from a sixty-eight-year-old janitor who carried photographs of his childhood in his coat.
A man who knew the house.
The bicycle.
The sofa.
His mother.
And apparently the father Vincent had buried in his mind decades ago.
Vincent looked down at the photograph in his hand.
For the first time, he noticed writing along the bottom edge.
Almost faded away.
Three words.
My boy sleeping.
May you like
Vincent stopped breathing.
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