Chapter 7
Thomas told Claire the part nobody should have hidden from her.
Rachel watched from a distance.
Birthdays.
School mornings.
One Christmas outside a church where Claire sang badly enough that Thomas still remembered Rachel laughing inside the parked car.
Claire cried harder with every memory she had never known belonged to her.
“She was there?”
Thomas nodded.
“She wanted to walk inside every time.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Because Lucia kept looking.”
Lucia scoffed.
“I had better things to do than hunt a sentimental fool.”
Thomas turned toward her.
“No, you didn’t.”
The room changed.
He had been quiet for twenty-four years.
Lucia was not prepared for him to stop.
“You sent Marco twice,” Thomas continued. “You sent men through Evelyn’s neighborhood. You paid cafe staff to report women matching Rachel’s description.”
Marco looked at Lucia.
Again.
Not at me.
That pattern was becoming clearer.
He had spent his entire life reacting to her.
Thomas reached into his coat and placed another wooden Bellini token on the table.
Not one of Rachel’s seven.
An eighth.
Lucia’s name.
Claire stared.
“What does that mean?”
Thomas looked at me.
“Rachel made a second set.”
The first identified people Lucia wanted to control.
The second identified people protecting Claire.
I looked at the eight tokens again.
“Where is it?”
Thomas shook his head.
“I never had it.”
“Who did?”
“Rachel.”
Then he looked toward the restaurant-history frame.
“She said if the first moon was ever opened, the second would know.”
I hated riddles.
Rachel apparently trusted time more than people.
Rafe searched the broken frame again.
Behind the old photographs, beneath a faded menu plaque, he found a narrow strip of blue cloth.
Claire reached for it.
Thomas stopped her.
“Wait.”
He looked at Lucia.
Lucia had gone pale.
Claire noticed.
So did I.
“Why?” I asked.
Thomas pointed at the cloth.
“Rachel wore that the night she disappeared for real.”
Silence.
Not the night Lucia forced her underground.
Six years later.
Thomas’s voice lowered.
“She came to the cafe because someone requested a meeting.”
“Who?”
He looked at Lucia.
“That’s what I never knew.”
Marco suddenly stood.
“I do.”
Every face turned toward him.
Lucia hissed, “Sit down.”
Marco ignored her for the first time.
May you like
He looked at me.
“Rachel met your father.”
