Chapter 3: The Shoebox Under the Bed
The car moved through the snow without hurrying.
Lily sat between me and Marco in the back seat, the stuffed rabbit on her lap, her yellow boots still on the wrong feet.
She had fallen asleep before we crossed the bridge, her head tilting slowly until it rested against my arm.
Marco kept his voice low.
"You know what this looks like."
"I know what it looks like."
"Richard has been running the chairman's office for eleven years.
If he forged your signature—"
"He didn't do it himself." I looked out at the river.
"He had someone do it.
Someone with access to my document templates and enough authority to push it through HR without a second review."
Marco was quiet for a moment.
"That's a short list."
"Very short."
The car stopped outside a narrow building on a street in Carroll Gardens.
Four floors.
Brick front.
A buzzer panel with half the name labels missing.
I looked up at the lit window on the third floor.
"Wait here with her," I said.
Marco looked at Lily, then back at me.
"She doesn't know you're coming."
"No."
"Dominic, it's past nine o'clock."
"I'm aware."
I got out of the car.
The buzzer for apartment 3B had no name on it.
I pressed it anyway.
A long pause.
Then a woman's voice, careful and tired.
"Who is it?"
"My name is Dominic Moretti."
Silence.
I waited.
"Emily," I said.
"Your daughter came to find me tonight.
She's safe.
She's in the car downstairs."
Another silence.
Then the door buzzed open.
The stairwell smelled like old wood and someone's dinner.
I took the stairs slowly, giving her time.
When I reached the third floor, the door to 3B was already open a few inches.
She was standing just inside it.
Emily Carter was younger than I expected.
Mid-thirties, dark circles under her eyes, wearing a gray sweater with the sleeves pulled over her hands.
She looked at me the way people look at something they have been afraid of for a long time.
"Where is she?"
"In the car with my colleague.
She's fine.
She fell asleep."
Emily's jaw tightened.
She stepped back to let me in.
The apartment was small and clean.
A child's drawings were taped along one wall in a careful row.
A kitchen table with two chairs.
A couch with a folded blanket on one arm.
She didn't offer me a seat.
"You should have called."
"You would have said no."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Why are you here?"
"Because your daughter rode two subway lines alone in a snowstorm to show me a termination letter with my forged signature on it." I kept my voice level.
"And because she also showed me a photograph from seventeen years ago with a message on the back addressed to me."
Emily went very still.
"She wasn't supposed to touch that."
"She loves you," I said.
"She didn't know what else to do."
Emily turned away.
She pressed one hand flat against the kitchen counter.
"You need to leave."
"Emily—"
"You need to leave, Mr.
Moretti.
Whatever is in those letters is not your business anymore.
It stopped being your business a long time ago."
"Someone forged my signature to have you fired without severance.
That makes it my business."
She turned back around.
"You think I don't know who did it?"
I waited.
"Then you know it wasn't me," I said.
Something shifted in her face.
Not softness.
More like a wall developing a crack it couldn't quite close.
"The shoebox," I said quietly.
"Your daughter told me about it."
Emily looked toward the hallway.
A closed door at the end.
Her bedroom, I guessed.
"Those letters were written for your father," she said.
"Not for you."
"My father has been d*ad for four years."
"I know."
"Then whoever wrote them—"
"My mother wrote them." Her voice was flat.
"She worked for your father for nineteen years.
She was his personal archivist.
She kept records of everything." She paused.
"Everything."
The word landed with weight she clearly intended.
"She knew something was wrong," Emily continued.
"She tried to reach your father directly in the last months before she passed.
He never responded.
She believed the letters were being intercepted."
"By whom?"
Emily looked at me steadily.
"Who do you think?"
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I already knew the number before I looked.
Richard.
Again.
I turned the screen so Emily could see it.
Her face didn't change.
But her hands, still wrapped in her sleeves, tightened against each other.
"He knows you're here," she said.
"Apparently."
She looked toward the hallway again.
Then she made a decision I could see her making.
"Wait here."
She disappeared down the hall.
I heard a door open.
A drawer.
Then a pause.
When she came back, she was carrying a shoebox held together with a rubber band.
She set it on the kitchen table between us.
She didn't open it.
"If I show you what's in here," she said quietly, "there is no going back.
For either of us."
I looked at the box.
Then I looked at her.
"There was never any going back," I said.
"Not after tonight."
She pulled off the rubber band.
And the first letter on top was addressed in handwriting I recognized immediately.
May you like
Not my father's.
Mine.
