Chapter 2 - The Price of a Last Name
The woman introduced herself as Nora Reyes, Emmy's aunt and legal guardian. She was thirty-four, with a tired face and the sort of precise voice people develop when they spend too much of their lives explaining emergencies to strangers.
She stood between my chair and the hospital bed.
"I brought her in this morning," she said. "Her hemoglobin fell again. She got dizzy at school and collapsed on the way to the nurse's office. They moved her here because the regular pediatric rooms were full."
I looked at Emmy. She was turning her bear's stitched ear between her fingers, listening to every word.
"Is she going to be all right?"
"She has a medical team," Nora answered. "That's what we're focused on."
I knew better than to ask a frightened guardian to trust me simply because my money had paid for the room. Still, I found myself reaching for the only kind of help I'd practiced giving.
"Whatever she needs, I'll pay for it."
"She needs adults who tell her the truth."
Dana stepped out with Michael, leaving the three of us alone. In the corridor, a cart rattled over tile. Emmy's monitor continued its quiet, unmerciful rhythm.
"The teddy was Adrian's," I said.
Nora nodded. "He gave it to her when she was little. She sleeps with it every night."
"Why does she know me?"
"Because her father talked about you. Not often. But enough."
"And her mother?"
"My sister Isabel. She died nine months ago. A car accident outside Quincy. Emmy was with me by then because Isabel's health had been failing."
My questions felt selfish beside a child struggling to breathe.
Nora sat on the edge of an empty visitor's chair. "Adrian was seventeen when Emmy was born," she said. "Isabel was eighteen. They were kids and they were scared, but they loved her."
I remembered Adrian at seventeen: narrow shoulders, grease on his hands after helping in our garages, and a look of furious disappointment when I missed his high-school recital because of an emergency at the company. I remembered him accusing me of thinking only in invoices. I remembered snapping that somebody had to keep the lights on.
I did not remember seeing any sign he was about to become a father. Perhaps I hadn't wanted to see.
"He was twenty when he disappeared," I said.
"He didn't vanish all at once," Nora said. "He stopped coming home to Isabel first. He kept saying he had to keep his family out of something. Then one night he went to meet a man near the harbor and never came back."
"The police had that information?"
"Yes. They interviewed Isabel. They interviewed me. We didn't know whom to trust after what happened at your office."
My stomach tightened. "What happened at my office?"
Nora shook her head. "Ask your business partner."
My business partner had a name: Graham Voss. We had built Ferraro Harbor Logistics from four delivery trucks and a leased loading dock. He managed contracts, compliance, and the kind of paperwork I preferred to leave to other people. Adrian had hated him.
"Your son came home with a split lip," Nora continued. "He said somebody at the docks had made a mistake and a patient had almost died. Then he told Isabel you believed the wrong person."
That last sentence struck a bruise I had carried for years.
Emmy stirred beneath her blanket. "Aunt Nora?"
"I'm here, sweetheart."
"Are you mad because I talked to Grandpa?"
Nora's expression changed. She went to the bedside and smoothed a braid away from Emmy's eyes.
"No. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Daddy told me his daddy could fix big things," Emmy whispered. "He said sometimes he forgot to fix small ones."
I turned toward the window so she couldn't see my face.
The doctor arrived a moment later. Dr. Hannah Pierce, a pediatric hematologist, explained that Emmy had an unusually severe autoimmune blood disorder made more dangerous by her rare red-cell phenotype. They were treating the underlying problem, monitoring her closely, and coordinating with specialized blood banks in case transfusion became necessary. No ordinary unit could simply be pulled from a hospital refrigerator.
"Does that mean I can give her blood?" I asked.
"Not until the blood bank establishes your type, confirms compatibility, and follows donor safety procedures," Dr. Pierce said. "Even a biological relationship wouldn't guarantee a match."
"Test me."
"We can arrange a formal donor evaluation. That won't replace the search already under way."
Nora looked at me for the first time without anger. It wasn't forgiveness. It was an assessment of whether I could do something useful without demanding control.
When the doctor left, Nora reached into her bag and took out a small envelope, soft at its corners from being handled.
"Isabel left this with our lawyer," she said. "She told him to give it to me if Emmy ever became seriously ill. I didn't open it until this morning."
May you like
On the envelope, in handwriting I knew better than my own, was a single line:
If she meets my father, tell him what he signed.
