Daddy's Treasure

Mia was asleep when they returned.

She lay curled on the back sitting-room sofa with one hand beneath her cheek. Rosa had covered her with a knitted blanket. A plate with two sandwich crusts waited on the table.

"She saved those for you," Rosa told Elena.

Elena looked at the crusts, then at her daughter.

Her face changed in a way Adrian was beginning to recognize: whatever she was carrying, she set some of it aside when she looked at Mia.

He wondered what it would feel like to be the person she looked at that way.

"How was the bank?" Rosa asked.

"Complicated," he said.

Rosa studied him. She had worked for his family long enough to know when that word concealed something.

But she merely nodded.

"I've made soup. Both of you look as though you need it."

"In a minute."

In the study, Adrian knelt beside the desk again.

Elena stood behind his shoulder.

"You need something thin," she said.

He reached for a letter opener.

"Preferably something that won't shred it."

He looked back at her.

"You have a better suggestion?"

She removed a hairpin from the loose knot at the back of her head.

Dark hair slipped over one shoulder.

For an inconvenient second, Adrian forgot the paper.

Elena bent beside him and straightened the pin.

"May I?"

He moved aside.

Her shoulder brushed his as she worked. She smelled faintly of soap and the coffee they had drunk in the car.

He could have given her more room.

He did not.

The paper slid free.

Elena caught it against the felt and brought it into the light.

Three words, a date, and initials.

SECOND KEY MOVED.

D.R.

The date was eleven years earlier.

"Daniel," she said.

She sat back on her heels.

Adrian looked at the note.

"He came here after my father died."

"He never told me he'd been in this house."

He almost said that perhaps there was an explanation.

There obviously was. That was precisely what hurt her.

Instead, he said, "We can call Julian tomorrow."

"Why tomorrow?"

"His old office is closed. My assistant is locating a current number."

She nodded, staring at the initials.

Adrian got to his feet and offered his hand.

She looked at it before accepting.

Her palm fitted against his. When she stood, she was closer than he expected, her hair still loose, her face tilted toward him.

"Thank you," she said.

He released her a moment late.

They ate soup in the kitchen while Mia slept.

Elena tried twice to help Rosa clear the counter. Twice Rosa sent her back to the table.

"You aren't working now. Sit down."

Adrian found himself absurdly grateful to his cook.

When they returned to the recording, Elena sat on the sofa instead of the visitor's chair. He set the machine between them.

Much of what remained concerned repairs and accounts. Julian referred to a Harbor Fund. Gabriel mentioned his workshop on Columbia Street.

Near the end, Daniel asked a question.

"What if you don't tell Adrian before he inherits all of this?"

There was a long pause.

Vittorio answered more quietly.

"Then I hope someone better at speaking to him gets the chance."

The file ended.

Adrian stared at the dark screen.

His father had found time to say that to an electrician.

He had never found time to say it to his son.

Beside him, Elena pressed a tissue beneath her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"You don't need to apologize."

"I keep thinking I've finished doing this. Then I hear him clear his throat and I'm back in our kitchen waiting for him to come home."

Adrian stayed still.

People usually looked to him for solutions. He could arrange things, acquire things, remove obstacles with a telephone call.

There was nothing he could buy that would help her now.

He reached for the tissue box and set it on her lap.

She gave a watery laugh.

"Very practical."

"It's one of my few skills."

"I doubt that."

Her eyes met his.

For the first time that day, she was looking at him without searching his face for information about someone else.

He wanted to keep her there.

"Mommy?"

Mia stood in the doorway, hair flattened on one side, Rabbit dangling from her hand.

Elena wiped her cheeks.

"Come here, sweetheart."

The child climbed into her lap, then studied Adrian.

"Did you have a bad sleep too?"

"I didn't sleep."

"You should."

"I'll put it on my list."

She touched the recorder.

"What's that?"

Elena glanced at Adrian before answering.

"We found something with Daddy's voice on it."

Mia looked down at the machine.

"Can he hear us?"

Elena's fingers tightened around the tissue.

"No, baby. It's like a video, but only the sound."

Mia considered that.

"Can I hear?"

Adrian found a short passage where Daniel was laughing about Gabriel's spilled coffee. He played it, watching Elena for any sign that she wanted him to stop.

Mia leaned against her mother.

When it ended, she asked to hear it again.

Adrian played it again.

Then the child patted the recorder.

"Keep it safe."

"I will," he promised.

Elena looked away.

Mia slid off her lap.

"I have safe things too."

"Your treasure box?" Elena asked.

"Daddy's things. And my shiny key."

Adrian's gaze met Elena's.

"What key, sweetheart?"

"The one from the blue book."

Elena went very still.

"Daniel's notebook," she said. "I put it in her memory box. I couldn't read it then."

Adrian reached for his coat.

"Show us."

Their apartment was twenty minutes away, above a bakery on a narrow Brooklyn street.

Elena hesitated outside the building.

"You don't need to come up."

Adrian looked at the bags she was carrying, then at Mia, who had decided she needed to be held.

He took the bags.

"Which floor?"

"Third."

"Then let's go."

Inside, the radiators clanked. There were small shoes beneath a bench and a child's coat hanging from a hook shaped like a cloud.

Photographs covered the hallway wall.

Daniel holding a baby. Elena laughing beside a lake. Neighbors around a crowded dinner table.

Adrian stopped before a photograph of Elena in a wedding dress.

She noticed.

"I haven't changed much in here."

"It's your home."

Her shoulders lowered slightly.

Mia returned dragging a pink plastic box.

She opened it on the rug and took out a measuring tape, a battered watch, three drawings, and a small brass key tied with blue ribbon.

806.

Adrian turned it over.

G.M. had been engraved on the reverse.

Gabriel Moretti.

He remembered the deed his uncle had left him six years earlier. A small workshop on Columbia Street, retained at Gabriel's request and managed by the family's property office ever since.

There had been a message with it.

Someday, you'll understand why your father trusted the electrician.

He had filed it without asking a single question.

"I think I know where it goes," he said.

Elena was already reaching for her coat.

"Tomorrow morning," he added. "She's tired."

Mia had curled against her mother's knee with the ribbon in her fist.

Elena looked down at her, then back at him.

"All right."

At the door, he handed back the bags.

For the first time in years, he disliked the prospect of going home.

"I'll have the car here at nine," he said.

"I'll be ready."

He almost told her she could stay with Mia while he went ahead.

Her expression warned him before he spoke.

"I'm coming, Adrian."

His name in her voice made the narrow landing feel warmer.

"I know."

The next morning, Rosa volunteered to take Mia to the park while they visited the workshop.

"Treasure is dusty," she told the child. "The park has ducks."

Mia chose ducks after securing a promise that nobody would open anything interesting without telling her afterward.

At Columbia Street, Adrian unlocked the outer door with the property office's spare.

Dust lay over a workbench and an unfinished chair.

Elena walked beside him through the narrow room.

"You used to come here?"

"When I was a boy. Gabriel tried to teach me to repair furniture."

"Were you good?"

"Impatient."

"I can imagine."

He glanced at her. There was a hint of a smile on her mouth.

He would have let her tease him all morning if it kept that expression there.

Against the back wall stood a cabinet of numbered metal compartments.

806 was near the bottom.

Adrian knelt, fitted the key, and hesitated.

Elena crouched beside him.

Her hand settled over his.

"Whatever's inside," she said, "we've already heard them argue about coffee. They were people, Adrian."

He looked at her fingers against his.

Then he turned the key.

Inside lay a document case, a ledger, and a bundle of envelopes.

The top envelope bore a name in dark blue ink.

ELENA.

She drew in a breath so sharply that he looked up.

"That's his handwriting."

He lifted the envelope and held it out.

She did not take it immediately.

On the back, beneath the sealed flap, Daniel had written a second line.

If Adrian is with you, please let him stay.

Elena read it.

Then she looked at Adrian as though the distance between them had suddenly become something neither of them understood.

Her fingers closed around the envelope.

"Stay," she whispered.

Adrian moved closer as she slipped her finger beneath the seal.