Chapter 4 — The Woman in the West Wing
Juliano closed the library doors.
Clara stood near the fireplace, arms wrapped around herself.
Vanessa had been sent upstairs with a nurse.
Mateo remained outside.
“Start again,” Juliano said.
Clara looked toward the window.
“There’s a woman in the west wing.”
“No one lives in the west wing.”
“She does.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know her real name.”
“You said she was my mother.”
“She told me she was.”
Juliano stared at Clara.
His mother, Elena Ferraz, had died in a private clinic after a stroke.
He had seen her body.
He had stood beside the coffin.
He had watched the earth cover it.
Clara wiped her palms on her apron.
“I thought you knew.”
“How long?”
“About four months.”
“And you never told me?”
“She begged me not to.”
“Why would you obey a stranger hiding in my house?”
Clara looked down.
“Because she knew things.”
“What things?”
“About me.”
Juliano waited.
Clara swallowed.
“She knew my mother’s name. She knew which hospital she was in. She knew I had a brother who died when I was sixteen.”
“That information can be bought.”
“She knew what he said before he died.”
Juliano’s expression tightened.
“What did he say?”
Clara’s eyes filled.
“I don’t want to say it.”
“Then you can explain it to the police.”
Clara stared at him.
He hated the fear in her face.
He hated more that he no longer knew whether it was innocent.
“She said my brother didn’t die in an accident,” Clara whispered.
The fire cracked behind her.
“She said someone from your family paid to make it look like one.”
Juliano’s voice hardened.
“My family?”
“She said the Ferraz name was connected.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You worked in my house for eight months and hid a stranger in the west wing for four of them.”
“I didn’t hide her.”
“You brought her food.”
Clara said nothing.
“You carried messages.”
Silence.
“You lied every day.”
Clara’s chin trembled.
“Yes.”
That simple answer landed harder than another denial would have.
Juliano walked toward the door.
“Show me.”
They crossed the mansion in silence.
The west wing had been closed since his father’s death.
Dust covered the long corridor.
The air smelled faintly of cedar and damp stone.
Clara stopped at the final bedroom.
She removed a thin brass key from inside her shoe.
Juliano looked at it.
“You’ve been carrying that in my house?”
“She told me never to leave it in my room.”
Clara unlocked the door.
The bedroom was empty.
A teacup sat on the nightstand.
Still warm.
The bed had been slept in.
An old wool shawl rested across the chair.
Juliano walked to the dresser.
A silver hairbrush lay beside a framed photograph facedown.
He turned it over.
His chest tightened.
The photo showed his mother.
Alive.
Older.
Standing beside Clara’s hospitalized mother.
On the back, written in fresh blue ink, were six words:
Juliano cannot marry Vanessa. She knows why.
May you like
Then the west-wing door slammed shut behind them.
And the lock turned from the outside.
