Chapter 7 - What Was Buried
Vincent met Arthur Sloane in the lobby of an old hotel near the river. He went alone as requested, but he told Judith where he would be and asked permission to record the conversation. Arthur agreed. A recording made with consent wasn't the same as sworn testimony, Judith had warned us, and it wouldn't excuse Arthur's own misconduct. But it might tell us where to look.
I learned the details that evening, seated opposite Vincent at Naomi's office.
Arthur had been twenty-nine when Francesca's attorney hired him to deliver documents to St. Agnes. He was not a lawyer. He was a courier who earned extra money by taking inconvenient jobs and asking no questions. Francesca paid him to witness a signature he never saw and file proof of service at an office building where she knew I could not be found.
"She told me the mother had disappeared," he said in the recording, his voice thin. "Then a woman in a hospital gown tried to stop me as I was leaving the ward. She kept asking where her baby was. I knew right then she hadn't disappeared."
Vincent paused the recording. I pressed both palms together until the shaking passed.
"And you left?" I asked, addressing the absent man.
Vincent looked at me. "Yes. He left."
Arthur had kept a letter. I had written it while I still believed my baby was alive somewhere in the building, begging Vincent to call me. The paper had been folded four times and tucked behind a photograph. Arthur said a nurse gave it to him after I'd collapsed from exhaustion, asking him to deliver it to the child's father. He had handed the photograph to Francesca and kept the letter when she ordered him to throw everything away.
I barely remembered writing the words. Seeing my handwriting made the six missing years rush over me like cold water.
Vincent, please come. They won't let me see our son. Someone said there is a custody form but I never signed it. If you don't want me, that's your decision. Please don't let him think I didn't want him.
I read it aloud once. I couldn't manage a second time.
"I used to believe you chose to leave me," Vincent said. "Even after I brought Leo home, I told myself that was the kinder explanation."
"Kinder for whom?"
He lowered his head. "For me."
Arthur had also given Vincent a payment record from a legal-services account, dated two days after Leo's birth. It didn't prove every allegation, but it connected the courier to Francesca's firm. Judith planned to authenticate it through formal discovery.
"Why speak now?" Naomi asked.
"His wife was pregnant when he took the job," Vincent said. "Their daughter just had a baby. He says he can't keep pretending he didn't know what he saw."
"Remorse isn't immunity," Naomi said.
"I told him that."
For the first time I understood Vincent wasn't trying to buy a neat reconciliation. His lawyer had advised him that his own failure to question the old orders could become part of the record. He intended to make it part of the record anyway.
I asked what he would do about his mother.
"She's demanding I drop the motion," he said. "She threatened to remove me as president of Bellini Residential if I cooperate."
"Can she?"
"The family trust controls enough votes. Probably."
I looked at him across the table. He had spent a lifetime being described as powerful. Yet the most important decision of his life had once been made by another person using his name.
"Don't do this because you want me to forgive you," I said.
"I'm doing it because Leo deserves the truth. Forgiveness isn't mine to request on a deadline."
Two days later Arthur signed an affidavit under counsel's supervision, preserving what he personally knew rather than guesses about other people's intentions. Evelyn supplied her shift log. The court-approved DNA results arrived that same afternoon, confirming with overwhelming probability that Leo was the biological child of both Vincent and me.
I thought I would feel triumphant.
Instead I stared at the page and cried for the birthdays I'd missed.
May you like
At five o'clock a courier brought an envelope to Vincent's office. Inside was notice of an emergency meeting of the Bellini Residential board. Francesca wanted a vote to remove him as president, effective the following Monday.
Camille had signed the notice as acting corporate secretary.
