Chapter 3 - Before She Became Avery
My name had been Sofia Moretti.
I didn't believe it.
Not that night.
Not when Luca showed me photographs.
Not when his phone filled with hundreds more.
There I was laughing in a kitchen.
Sleeping on a couch.
Standing barefoot beside Luca on a Philadelphia rooftop.
Wearing his shirt.
Wearing a wedding dress.
Pregnant.
That photograph broke something inside me.
I stared at my own enormous belly.
My hand shook.
“That was me?”
Luca nodded.
“Eight months.”
I touched the screen.
“And Leo?”
“He was inside you.”
I looked at the sleeping child.
My child.
The words wouldn't fit inside my head.
Luca took me to a private medical center the following morning.
I agreed because I needed proof more than I feared him.
The DNA results arrived two days later.
Probability of maternity:
99.9998%.
I read the paper seven times.
Then vomited.
I spent twenty minutes sitting on the bathroom floor.
When I came out, Luca was waiting down the hallway.
He didn't approach me.
That surprised me.
Everything about the man suggested he took whatever he wanted.
But he waited.
“What happened to me?” I asked.
His face changed.
“That is the question I've spent eleven months trying to answer.”
He took me to his home outside Philadelphia.
I recognized nothing.
Until I entered the nursery.
My knees buckled.
Painted stars covered the ceiling.
There was a wooden moon above the crib.
I touched it.
A memory flashed.
Luca on a ladder.
Me laughing below.
“You're making it crooked.”
“It isn't crooked.”
“Luca, the moon is sideways.”
“The moon is round.”
“The crescent isn't!”
Then Luca laughing.
A real laugh.
I returned to the present with tears streaming down my cheeks.
“You painted this.”
He stared at me.
“You remember?”
“One second.”
Hope appeared on his face.
That was worse than anger.
Because I couldn't give him more.
“No. It's gone.”
He looked away.
That afternoon, Luca finally told me about Sofia.
About us.
We had met three years earlier after I accidentally backed my ancient Honda into his Mercedes.
“You threatened to sue me?” I asked.
“You threatened to hit me with a tire iron.”
I stared.
He almost smiled.
Apparently Sofia had been a pediatric nursing student.
Stubborn.
Funny.
Entirely unimpressed by Luca Moretti.
He had fallen first.
I had resisted because I knew what his family was.
Then his mother became ill.
I helped care for her.
Months became a year.
The dangerous man began bringing coffee to my early classes.
The woman determined never to love him began leaving a porch light on when he worked late.
We married quietly.
Then came Leo.
The pregnancy wasn't easy.
At twelve weeks, I hemorrhaged.
At twenty-one weeks, doctors discovered cervical complications.
At twenty-eight weeks, I was placed on strict bed rest.
At thirty-one, contractions began.
“You thought you were losing him every week,” Luca said.
His voice cracked.
I looked at him.
“And you?”
“I thought I was losing both of you.”
He told me about sleeping in a hospital chair.
About counting contractions.
About Sofia squeezing his hand until his wedding ring cut his finger.
About the night doctors warned them their son might be born too early.
Apparently I had looked at Luca and said:
“If you have to choose, choose him.”
Luca had become furious.
“I told you there would never be a choice.”
His eyes lowered.
“I would burn the world before choosing between you.”
Leo was born seven weeks premature during a thunderstorm.
Three pounds, nine ounces.
He didn't cry.
For forty-one seconds.
Luca remembered every one.
I didn't remember any.
But when he described the neonatal intensive care unit, my chest started hurting.
A tiny incubator.
Blue lights.
My hand through a plastic opening.
Leo's fingers around mine.
Then a memory arrived.
Not an image.
A feeling.
Milk soaking through a hospital gown because my baby was too weak to nurse.
Sitting beside an incubator at 3:14 a.m.
Whispering:
“Mommy's here.”
I covered my mouth.
Luca stood.
“What?”
“I remember his hand.”
He crossed the room.
I stepped backward.
He stopped instantly.
Pain crossed his face.
“Sorry.”
That single word told me something photographs couldn't.
He still loved me.
And I was terrified I might never become the woman who loved him back.
That night I slept in a guest bedroom.
At 2:07 a.m., crying woke me.
Leo.
I followed the sound without thinking.
Luca stood in the nursery holding him.
“Bottle isn't working.”
I reached for Leo.
He came immediately.
I sat in the rocking chair.
My body knew what my mind didn't.
Rock.
Pat.
Hum.
Three notes.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Leo slept.
I looked up.
Luca stood in the doorway with tears silently running down his face.
“Did I do this before?”
“Every night.”
Something inside me shattered.
“I don't remember him, Luca.”
May you like
His voice was barely audible.
“He remembers you.”
