Chapter 9: The Box

Brogary Savings stood on Anchor Street, in a grey stone building older than anyone's grandfather.

I went in at nine the next morning with the key in my fist.

Corrado waited by the door, with his hands in his coat pockets and his eyes on the street.

"Alone?" the clerk asked.

"Alone," I said.

She led me down a marble stair to a vault lined with brass boxes.

Then she left me in a small private room with a lamp and a table.

Box 411 slid out heavy.

Inside lay a flat leather folder, a small yellow boot with a worn sole, and a letter in a square, careful hand.

My own name was on the envelope.

Emanuela Sabbadin.

I sat down hard.

The first thing I took out was a birth certificate.

It was brittle with age.

It said I'd been born twenty-two years ago in Brogary to Ruggero Sabbadin and his wife.

The second was a photograph of a man standing on a dock with a little girl on his shoulders.

She wore yellow boots and a missing front tooth.

Her face was mine.

The man looked at the camera, and he was laughing.

My hands went numb.

I opened the letter.

"Emanuela," it said.

"If you're reading this, you're twenty-two, and I'm dead, and the man who killed me took you."

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