Chapter 2 - THE NAME MY MOTHER NEVER USED
I did not leave the ballroom with Adrian Vale.
That surprised him.
It surprised me too.
One of his security men approached after the music stopped, but I took Lucy’s hand and stepped backward.
“No.”
Adrian lifted a hand.
The man stopped.
Celeste stared at me as though I had violated some rule by not immediately becoming grateful.
Adrian said quietly:
“No one is forcing you anywhere.”
“Good.”
The silver-haired woman was still crying.
Adrian introduced her.
“My mother. Sofia Vale.”
Sofia did not offer her hand.
Instead she kept looking at my face.
“You have her eyes.”
I hated how quickly that sentence affected me.
“My mother is dead.”
Sofia closed her eyes.
“When?”
“Eight years ago.”
Her shoulders seemed to collapse.
I felt anger before sympathy.
“You're talking as if you knew her.”
“I did.”
“Then tell me her real name.”
Sofia looked toward Adrian.
He seemed as confused as I was.
“Elena Vale,” Sofia said. “My younger sister.”
Celeste stepped forward.
“Adrian, surely we're not doing this in front of everyone.”
He finally looked at her.
“Then stop making it more public.”
Her face tightened.
I wanted Lucy away from the phones.
Away from whispers.
Away from whatever had just happened.
Arthur Bellini, the conductor, quietly offered us his private dressing room near the musicians’ entrance.
I accepted because it had a lock.
Inside, Lucy climbed into my lap.
“Did I win?”
I nearly laughed.
“No, baby.”
“Was I bad?”
“No.”
She frowned.
“Then why was everybody weird?”
I kissed her forehead.
Because I had no answer a six-year-old needed to hear.
Ten minutes later, Adrian knocked.
Alone.
I opened the door only halfway.
He held his phone.
On the screen was a photograph.
Two teenage girls stood beside a piano.
The older one had dark hair and serious eyes.
The younger girl was laughing toward someone outside the frame.
My mother.
Not similar.
Not maybe.
Rose Bennett at seventeen.
I knew the tilt of her head.
The small gap between her front teeth before she later had dental work.
The scar above her right eyebrow from what she always claimed was a childhood bicycle accident.
I took the phone.
“Where did you get this?”
“Family archive.”
“Who is the other girl?”
“My mother.”
Sofia.
My throat tightened.
The photograph was dated 1994.
Mom had always told me she'd grown up outside Providence.
She said her parents died when she was young.
She said she had no siblings.
All lies.
Adrian didn't seem triumphant.
If anything, he looked wounded.
“I didn't know my aunt was alive.”
“How could you not?”
“My mother told us Elena disappeared when she was nineteen.”
“Disappeared how?”
“She left one night.”
“For what reason?”
“I don't know.”
I stared at him.
“You're the head of this family and you don't know why your aunt disappeared?”
His expression hardened slightly.
“My family has spent thirty years surviving by not asking certain questions.”
That sounded like the first believable thing anyone had said.
Then Sofia called through the door:
“Ask Emma about the star.”
I looked down.
The necklace around my neck had been Mom's.
A tiny five-pointed gold star.
I wore it because it was one of the few things she left me.
Adrian stared at it.
Then removed something from beneath his shirt.
Another star.
Not identical.
Matching.
Two halves of the same design.
On the back of mine was one engraved letter.
E.
On his:
S.
“Elena and Sofia,” he said.
I almost dropped it.
Mom had told me the E stood for Emma.
Another lie.
Then my phone began vibrating.
My catering supervisor.
Eleven missed calls.
A text:
May you like
DO NOT COME BACK TO THE BALLROOM. MEDIA ARE ASKING WHO YOU ARE.
Whatever secret my mother had buried for thirty-one years was already escaping the room.
