Chapter 2 - What We Were Told
Patrick's wedding coordinator had reserved a small office behind the sanctuary so I could retouch my makeup before the photographs. Instead, I sat there in a dress worth more than my first car, trying to explain six stolen years to the man who had publicly ruined my wedding.
“You could have called,” Marcello said.
“I did.”
“Anna—”
“Three times that night. The first call rang until voicemail. The second was answered by a man who said you were out of the country. The third ended with him telling me I should be careful about who I tried to reach.”
Marcello rubbed his forehead. “My father handled my security then. I didn't know.”
“You didn't ask.”
“I looked for you.”
“After you left Savannah without saying goodbye.”
Celia came in with Mia and a juice box. “She wants to know whether the reception has cake.”
“Of course it does.” I took Mia onto my lap. “You can go with Aunt Celia and have a slice.”
“Will Marcello come?” Mia asked.
He lowered himself until his eyes were level with hers. “I'm going to talk with your mom first. Is that okay?”
Mia studied him seriously. “If you're my dad, why don't you know my birthday?”
The question hit him harder than Patrick's threats had.
“Because I've missed a lot,” he said. “And I am sorry.”
“It's May fourth,” she informed him. “I like strawberry cake. Not the kind with nuts.”
“I'll remember.”
“You can write it down.” She handed him a broken purple crayon she'd been keeping in her flower-girl basket.
He accepted it as carefully as if it were something priceless.
After Celia led her away, Marcello waited until the door closed.
“Tell me about the man.”
“He was broad, with silver hair and a navy blazer. He stood outside my apartment on Whitaker Street. He knew I was pregnant before I'd told anyone but my mother. He said if I tried to make a DeLuca child into a weapon, your family could get a judge to decide I was unfit.”
“That's not how custody works.”
“I know that now. I was twenty-two, and he had pictures of me going to a prenatal clinic. I believed he could do it.”
“What ring?”
“A heavy gold one with an anchor cut into the stone. Your father wore the same ring in the photograph above your desk.”
Marcello turned his wedding program over in his hands. “My father gave that ring to the head of company security years ago.”
I felt the room tilt. “Then you know who it was.”
“I think I do. His name is Daniel Rusk.”
The name meant nothing to me. The way Marcello said it meant everything.
He told me he'd sent letters to my old address and to my mother's house. He'd received one reply, typed and signed with my name, refusing any further contact. I'd never seen it. When I told him that, he took out his phone and showed me a photograph of the letter.
The signature was a clumsy imitation of mine. My name bent too sharply on the final A.
“You believed this?” I asked.
“You'd already moved. My father said I'd frightened you.”
“Did you believe him?”
Marcello didn't answer immediately. “I wanted to. It hurt less than the thought that you'd called and I'd missed it.”
That admission unsettled me more than a hundred apologies would have.
Patrick appeared in the doorway carrying two paper cups of coffee. “We have guests waiting,” he said. “We need to finish this.”
“Give us ten minutes,” I told him.
“We don't have ten minutes. The reception venue charges by the hour.”
Marcello stood. “I'll leave. But I'll need a way to reach you.”
“I'll contact you through Celia.”
Patrick set the coffee down too hard. “A lawyer should handle it.”
“I agree,” I said. “My lawyer.”
His jaw tightened. “Anna, we're married.”
“Yes,” I answered, looking at the ring on my finger. “We are. That doesn't make you Mia's legal father.”
He stared at me. It was the first time I'd ever said that aloud to him.
“I'm the one who's been there,” he said quietly. “I took her to school when she was sick. I paid for the dentist. You asked me to be her family.”
“I did. And I'm grateful for what you've done. But don't make me feel guilty for telling her the truth.”
Marcello excused himself. He didn't ask to hug me. He didn't demand another minute with Mia. At the door he said, “I'll find the letter I kept, and I'll find Rusk. We can find out what happened.”
When he was gone, Patrick closed the office door.
“You have no idea what you've invited into our lives,” he said.
“Neither do you.”
“I knew he existed.”
The words hung between us.
Patrick swallowed. “You told me there was someone from before.”
“That isn't what you said.”
He stared at the floor. And in that silence, I remembered something I'd ignored weeks earlier: an envelope on his desk, addressed not to Patrick Hale, but to DeLuca Holdings. He'd told me it was work mail delivered by mistake.
May you like
“Patrick,” I said, “how did you know Marcello was coming today?”
His expression told me I'd finally asked the right question.
