Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT
One year later, Luca Moretti saw his dead marriage walking past a
restaurant window.
He was halfway through telling Evelyn that selling the Harbor Street
property would make the quarterly numbers look better and the company
weaker when his voice simply stopped.
Evelyn followed his gaze.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass of Aurelio, a woman in a cream coat
moved through the afternoon crowd.
Long brown hair.
Same height.
Same way of pushing one shoulder slightly forward when hurrying.
Luca’s heart slammed.
“Natalie?”
The woman kept walking.
He was out of his chair before Evelyn could answer.
“Luca.”
He ignored her.
The restaurant doors opened onto Grant Street. Luca pushed through a
group of people waiting for valet service, caught sight of the cream
coat twenty yards away, and ran.
“Natalie!”
The woman did not turn.
He reached her at the corner and grabbed her shoulder.
She spun around.
Wrong face.
Wrong eyes.
Wrong woman.
Luca froze.
The stranger jerked backward.
“What the hell?”
He released her immediately.
“Sorry.”
Her anger remained.
“Yeah, you should be.”
“I thought you were someone else.”
“No kidding.”
She walked away, glancing back once as if deciding whether to call
someone.
Luca stood in the middle of the sidewalk breathing too hard.
Across the street, traffic moved. A bus hissed at the curb. Pedestrians
flowed around him.
No Natalie.
Of course not.
Natalie had disappeared from Pittsburgh thirteen months earlier.
Her old apartment emptied. Her freelance interior design contracts
canceled. Her phone disconnected. Her mother refused every call from
Moretti attorneys.
Luca told himself he stopped looking because she asked to be left alone.
The truth was less flattering.
He stopped looking because every search returned him to the same memory:
Natalie at the bedroom door. One hand under her pregnant belly. Please
don’t leave us.
A stroller wheel squeaked somewhere behind him.
Luca turned automatically.
Nothing.
Evelyn emerged from the restaurant, gold lunch dress hidden partly
beneath a black coat.
“You cannot grab random women on Grant Street.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked past her.
“I saw Natalie.”
“You saw someone who resembled her.”
“I know what I saw.”
Evelyn’s face became still.
That expression had changed over the last year. Once it meant control.
Now Luca sometimes recognized guilt underneath it.
“You have seen her everywhere for twelve months,” she said quietly.
He looked at her.
“That’s not true.”
Evelyn did not bother arguing.
Behind them, one narrow service alley cut between Aurelio and the
neighboring building, barely wide enough for delivery carts.
Inside that alley, less than thirty yards away, Natalie Moretti stood
pressed against a brick wall with both hands gripping the handle of a
double stroller.
Her heart beat so hard she could hear it.
The twins stared up at her.
Eli held a cloth rabbit by one ear.
Noah had one sock halfway off and seemed deeply interested in finishing
the job.
Natalie crouched quickly.
“Shh.”
Neither child had been making noise.
She was the one who needed the instruction.
Through the alley opening she could see part of Luca’s reflection in a
dark storefront window.
Same dark hair. Same broad shoulders. Same impossible ability to make
the street feel smaller simply by standing on it.
He looked older.
Not much.
Enough.
Natalie hated that she noticed.
She pushed the stroller deeper into the alley.
A memory hit with the violence of weather.
Luca beside the front door. Suitcase in hand. Evelyn waiting behind him.
Natalie crying.
Please don’t leave us.
His back turning.
The front door closing.
Natalie looked down at the twins.
Eli reached up toward her.
She touched his hand.
“You have already given up your paternal rights to the children,” she
whispered, though Luca could not hear her and the boys could not
understand.
The sentence was not entirely legally accurate.
Her attorney had reminded her of that repeatedly.
But it was emotionally true.
He had signed. He had denied. He had left.
Natalie straightened and pushed the stroller toward the alley’s far
exit.
One block. Then the parking garage. Then home.
She could do one block.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
Fast.
She stopped.
No.
The footsteps entered the alley.
Natalie closed her eyes.
“Natalie.”
Luca’s voice.
Breathless.
Disbelieving.
Alive with thirteen months of distance.
Natalie turned slowly.
Luca stood at the alley entrance.
He looked at her face first.
Then the stroller.
Then the two boys.
The color left him.
Noah looked directly at Luca with the exact gray-green eyes that
appeared in every Moretti family photograph for four generations.
Luca took one stunned step forward.
May you like
Natalie’s grip tightened around the stroller.
And she knew from his face that hiding was over.
