Chapter 2 - THE BLUE FOLDER
The surgeon called the wound repair successful. I was grateful for the word, even though it meant a week of careful dressing changes, pain that came in waves, and a physical-therapy assessment before I could manage the stairs to my apartment.
Megan arrived from Milwaukee with a tote bag full of socks and an expression that suggested she was considering personally prosecuting the entire wedding. She sat beside me while I explained what had happened. She listened without interrupting, which was more alarming than her usual habit of asking twelve questions at once.
“You carried that thing by yourself?” she finally said.
“I tried to.”
“Emily, I've watched you struggle to move our aunt's sofa. That cake had twenty stories.”
“Tiers.”
“I don't care if it had balconies. Nobody should have told an injured person to move it.”
I let her hold my hand. For a while we were simply sisters again, and not witnesses in an investigation involving a family whose name appeared on half the buildings downtown.
A social worker came to discuss discharge planning. We talked about stairs, transportation, wages, and whether I would feel safe returning to the Moretti property to collect my things. I told her I didn't want to go there until someone could accompany me. She added that to the plan without suggesting I was being ungrateful.
By noon, Daniel called. He asked whether I would agree to speak with Luca on the hospital phone. I said yes, though my stomach tightened at the sound of his name.
“Emily,” he said, “first, are you getting what you need?”
“The nurses have been good.”
“Your pay will continue while the insurance and legal questions are sorted out. Independent counsel is reviewing the workplace injury. You won't lose housing or benefits because of this.”
He paused, perhaps hearing himself sound like a man dictating a solution.
“I should say this differently. I want to offer support, and I want you to have your own adviser before signing anything.”
“Thank you.”
“I'm sorry I didn't see what was happening.”
I watched Megan quietly peel an orange at the end of my bed. “Sofia tried to tell you she was frightened,” I said.
“Yes. She did. I assumed wedding nerves. I won't use being busy as an excuse.”
“Is she all right?”
“She's with Mrs. Price and her therapist. She knows Vanessa won't be coming into the house. She asked me to tell you that the wheelchair's pink blanket is yours to borrow while you're sick.”
My throat tightened. “Tell her I'm not borrowing a child's favorite blanket.”
“She said you'd say that.”
I could hear the smallest smile in his voice.
Then it vanished. “Sofia mentioned a blue folder. I found it in the art-room cabinet where she said it would be. Before I opened it, I had Daniel document where it was and contact the detective.”
“What is in it?”
“Copies of medical reports that don't match what her therapist remembers filing. A school withdrawal request. An unsigned application naming Vanessa as her proposed temporary guardian.”
I closed my eyes. At the mansion, Sofia had asked me whether children could be sent away merely because their legs didn't work. I had answered no, reassuring her that people had to listen to her father. I hadn't known how determined someone might be to make him stop listening.
“Did Sofia take those papers?” I asked.
“She says she found them in Vanessa's unlocked desk while looking for colored pencils two weeks ago. Mrs. Price knew about the folder, but I didn't. Sofia was afraid I would think she had been snooping.”
“She's eleven. She shouldn't have had to investigate anything.”
“I know.”
Luca was quiet for a moment. “There's another thing. Sofia wants you to know that yesterday she wasn't walking. She stood for eleven seconds with both hands on a rail. She says everyone keeps calling it walking and it makes her feel like a failure when she needs her chair.”
My chest ached. “Please tell her eleven seconds was enough. Standing isn't a test of whether she deserves to stay home.”
“I will.”
After the call, Megan looked at me over the orange peel. “Are you in love with him?”
I stared. “What?”
“You look different when you say his daughter's name.”
“I love Sofia,” I answered. “That's not the same thing.”
“I know it isn't.” She offered me an orange slice. “But you're allowed to have feelings you haven't decided what to do with.”
I ate the slice and told her she was becoming annoying in her old age. She said twenty-nine was a perfectly respectable age for wisdom.
In the afternoon, Detective Chen returned with a colleague and an evidence bag containing a printed copy of the agreement Sofia had produced. Chen asked me to describe when I had first seen it.
“Yesterday morning,” I said. “In Sofia's room. She showed me the heading and the amount. I didn't take it because she was scared Vanessa would search her things.”
“Do you recognize the medical provider's name?”
The page bore the heading BELMONT CONTINUING CARE ASSESSMENT and the name Dr. Adrian Reeve.
“Yes. He attended one appointment after Sofia's accident, I think. But her regular rehab team is at Lakeside Pediatric Rehabilitation.”
Chen made a note. “Sofia's father has supplied consent for us to obtain pertinent records through the proper process. We need to check whether that assessment was written, altered, or simply misrepresented.”
She held up another page. This one stated that Sofia had no meaningful prospect of independent mobility, and therefore required permanent placement abroad. The language looked cold, even cruel, in a way that had nothing to do with Sofia's actual care needs.
“Her therapy notes don't say that,” I whispered.
“Do you have direct knowledge of what they say?”
“Only what the therapist explained to Sofia and Luca after sessions. She said recovery was uncertain and would take time. Nothing about sending her away.”
“Then that's what your statement should say.”
Before leaving, Chen told me that the man listed as a medical assessor had not yet confirmed the document. She didn't promise an arrest. She promised to check.
The anonymous message was troubling her, too. She asked whether I had contacted the sender. I hadn't.
“Good. Don't answer it yet. Let us preserve what we can.”
That evening I opened the camera roll on my phone and found a picture from three weeks earlier. Sofia sat in the therapy room wearing purple sneakers, laughing because she'd drawn a mustache on a cardboard sun. Her wheelchair was beside the rail. In the photograph, she looked like an eleven-year-old having a good afternoon, not a line item in a twelve-million-dollar agreement.
I sent the image to Mrs. Price only after asking Luca whether Sofia was comfortable with it. She was, and she wrote back through his phone: THAT SUN LOOKS LIKE DANIEL.
I laughed so suddenly my calf protested.
At eight, Mrs. Price called with news that the mansion's wedding decorations were being removed. Vanessa's possessions had been inventoried and stored pending arrangements through her attorney. Her access credentials were canceled. Luca had asked an independent security company to review how wedding personnel entered staff-only rooms.
“Daniel isn't angry?” I asked.
“He is,” Mrs. Price said. “Mostly at himself. He's the one who hired the contractor who installed the service cameras, and some of those cameras were offline for the afternoon.”
“That's convenient.”
“Perhaps. But we need logs before calling it deliberate.”
Mrs. Price could turn a sentence into a lesson better than any teacher I had ever known.
She also told me that the therapists wanted Sofia's routine preserved. The girl had asked whether tomorrow's session could include the same balance exercises as last week. Her father had agreed, provided Sofia wanted them and the therapist considered them safe.
For the first time since the wedding, I breathed easily.
Then Mrs. Price lowered her voice. “Emily, there's something you should know. Sofia said the woman who helped Vanessa with the blue folder wasn't a doctor. She wore a visitor badge and carried a silver case. The girl remembers because the woman had a tiny bell clipped to her keys.”
“Did she tell Daniel?”
“Yes. He's checking visitor records.”
I pictured the blue folder in Sofia's small hands. The mysterious visitor. The false report. All the adults who had passed through the mansion without anyone asking what they were doing near a child's medical information.
As night settled beyond my window, my phone received another message from the same unknown number.
THE BELL BELONGS TO A WOMAN NAMED MIRIAM VALE. SHE DOESN'T WORK FOR A HOSPITAL.
This time, the sender added a photograph: a silver key ring with a small blue bell attached.
May you like
I didn't answer. I sent it to Detective Chen. Then I asked Megan to move her chair closer to my bed.
I was beginning to understand why Vanessa had been so desperate to stop Sofia's therapy session. Someone had spent months creating the paperwork for a decision the girl herself had never made.
