Chapter 2 - THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW DRESS
“Name?”
“No one got it.”
I stared at the nurse.
For most of my adult life, people had kept records of everyone who came within fifty feet of me.
Drivers.
Waiters.
Contractors.
Businessmen.
Enemies.
Yet the six-year-old girl who had kept me alive on a Manhattan sidewalk had disappeared without leaving so much as a first name.
“Find her.”
The nurse blinked.
Dr. Kaplan sighed.
“You nearly died six hours ago.”
“I heard you the first four times.”
“Apparently not well enough.”
I looked through the glass wall.
Marco Bianchi stood outside with two security men.
He had been beside me for seventeen years.
My father had trusted him.
I trusted him more than almost anyone alive.
“Marco.”
He entered immediately.
“You need something?”
“The girl.”
His expression changed slightly.
“What girl?”
“The one who called 911.”
Marco glanced at Kaplan.
“Luca, you should rest.”
That was the first time something bothered me.
Not enough to become suspicion.
Just enough to stay in my memory.
“I didn’t ask what I should do.”
Marco lowered his voice.
“We’ll find her.”
“How?”
“Traffic cameras. Building cameras. The pharmacy bag she was carrying might give us something.”
I looked at him.
“You saw the footage?”
“Your people sent it.”
“Then start there.”
He nodded.
Kaplan folded his arms.
“You people realize he is still my patient?”
Marco almost smiled.
“I’ve been losing that argument for years.”
“I’m not joking.”
Neither was I.
By midnight, my security team had collected video from four surrounding buildings.
At 7:40 the next morning, they had something.
The pharmacy bag.
A camera mounted above a deli entrance had captured the child turning toward me seconds before I collapsed.
For three frames, the bag faced the camera.
QUEENS COMMUNITY PHARMACY.
ASTORIA.
Marco stared at the image.
“Could mean nothing. Pharmacies sell things all over the city.”
“She was carrying prescription medicine.”
“We don’t know that.”
“The bag was stapled.”
He looked at me.
I had been watching the video for twenty minutes.
The little girl appeared again and again.
Blonde curls.
Faded yellow dress.
Thin shoulders.
And eyes I could not stop noticing.
Gray-green.
Mine had been described that way since I was a child.
It meant nothing.
Millions of people had green eyes.
That was what I told myself.
“Call the pharmacy,” I said.
Marco hesitated.
“They’re not going to hand over patient information.”
“I didn’t ask them to.”
He waited.
“Ask if they recognize the dress.”
The pharmacist did.
Not because of the dress.
Because of the child.
She apparently collected the same prescription every month with her mother.
The pharmacist refused to provide a name or address.
I respected that.
Then she added something that changed everything.
“The little girl came alone yesterday.”
I was sitting upright in the hospital bed.
“Why?”
The pharmacist hesitated.
“I shouldn’t be discussing a customer.”
“She saved my life.”
Silence.
Then the woman sighed.
“Her mother is sick.”
“What medication?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is the child safe?”
Another pause.
“That’s what I’ve been wondering.”
By eleven, Kaplan had threatened to physically block the hospital door if I left.
At eleven fifteen, I signed myself out against medical advice.
At eleven thirty, I was in a black SUV crossing the Queensboro Bridge.
“You are unbelievable,” Marco said from the passenger seat.
“So I’m told.”
“You don’t even know where she lives.”
“I know where the pharmacy is.”
“This is insane.”
I looked at him.
“Yesterday, a six-year-old stranger stopped while grown adults filmed me dying.”
Marco said nothing.
“I’m going to thank her.”
Queens Community Pharmacy occupied the ground floor of a narrow brick building between a laundromat and a Dominican restaurant.
The pharmacist recognized me immediately.
So did everyone else.
I hated that.
“I told your people I can’t provide medical records,” she said.
“I’m not asking.”
Her name tag read PRIYA PATEL.
I placed a business card on the counter.
“If the girl comes in again, give her this.”
Priya looked at the card.
“You came all the way to Queens for that?”
“Yes.”
Her expression softened slightly.
Then the bell above the door rang.
A child walked in.
Yellow dress.
Blonde curls.
Brown pharmacy bag folded beneath one arm.
She stopped when she saw me.
I forgot every sentence I had planned.
Her eyes were even more unsettling in person.
She pointed at me.
“You woke up.”
I smiled.
“Apparently.”
She studied me seriously.
“You look better.”
“I feel better.”
“That doctor man said you might die.”
Marco shifted behind me.
I crouched so we were closer to eye level.
“You called for help.”
She shrugged.
“You needed an ambulance.”
“As it turns out.”
She frowned.
“Why are you here?”
“To say thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then she walked toward the counter as though we had completed a normal transaction.
Priya looked at me over her head.
I almost laughed.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The girl turned.
“Mia.”
“Mia what?”
“Bennett.”
Something moved through me.
Not recognition.
Not yet.
“How old are you?”
“Six and three quarters.”
Priya placed a small prescription bag on the counter.
Mia counted crumpled dollar bills and coins.
Priya gently pushed some of the money back.
“You already paid enough.”
Mia frowned.
“My mom said not to take charity.”
“It’s not charity.”
“What is it?”
Priya thought quickly.
“Summer discount.”
Mia accepted that.
I watched her put the medicine carefully into her brown bag.
“Is that for your mom?”
She looked suspicious now.
“Yes.”
“Is she okay?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
I stood.
“Where is she?”
Mia pulled the bag against her chest.
“Home.”
“Is anyone with her?”
“No.”
Priya’s face tightened.
“How long has she been alone?”
Mia shrugged.
“She sleeps a lot.”
Every instinct I had sharpened.
“Mia, when did your mom last eat?”
“I made toast yesterday.”
“And today?”
“She said she wasn’t hungry.”
I looked at Marco.
“Car.”
Mia stepped backward.
“No.”
I stopped.
“My mom says I don’t go in cars with strangers.”
“She’s right.”
That answer surprised her.
“So we walk.”
Marco looked at me like I had finally lost my mind.
It was six blocks.
By block three, sweat was running down my back and Kaplan’s warnings were echoing in my head.
Mia noticed.
“You’re not supposed to get too hot.”
I looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“The ambulance lady said your heart got confused.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
“That is technically one interpretation.”
Mia lived in a fourth-floor walk-up above a small auto repair shop.
The hallway smelled of bleach and old cooking oil.
She climbed the stairs quickly.
I did not.
Marco noticed my breathing.
“You should stop.”
“I’m fine.”
“You collapsed yesterday.”
“Thank you for the update.”
Mia reached Apartment 4B.
She unlocked three separate locks.
That bothered me.
Inside was a tiny living room with a secondhand couch, a child’s drawings taped to the walls, and an oscillating fan pushing hot air from one side of the room to the other.
“Mom?”
No answer.
Mia put down the pharmacy bag.
“Mommy?”
She disappeared down the hallway.
Then I heard her voice change.
“Mom?”
I was moving before Marco could stop me.
A woman lay on the bedroom floor.
She wore an oversized T-shirt.
Her dark blonde hair was tangled around her face.
Her skin was almost gray.
Mia knelt beside her.
“Mommy, wake up.”
I reached for my phone.
Then the woman opened her eyes.
They found Mia first.
Then me.
Her entire body went rigid.
For one impossible second, neither of us breathed.
I knew that face.
Older.
Thinner.
Exhausted almost beyond recognition.
But I knew it.
“Elena.”
Marco stopped dead behind me.
Elena Bennett had once been Elena Rossi.
Seven years earlier, she had been the only woman I had ever seriously considered leaving my family’s world for.
Then she disappeared with two hundred thousand dollars from one of my accounts and a note telling me never to find her.
At least, that was what I had been told.
Her lips parted.
“Luca?”
Mia looked between us.
“You know my mom?”
Elena tried to sit up.
She couldn’t.
I caught her before her head struck the floor.
She stared into my face with pure terror.
Not guilt.
Not shame.
Terror.
“You can’t be here.”
“Elena, you need a hospital.”
“No.”
“You can barely sit up.”
“No hospital.”
Mia began crying.
“Mommy.”
Elena looked at her daughter.
Then at me.
And suddenly I understood why she was afraid.
Not of the hospital.
Of me.
“Who told you I was here?” she whispered.
“Nobody.”
Her eyes moved toward Marco.
Something happened.
She flinched.
Not subtly.
Not accidentally.
She grabbed my sleeve with surprising strength.
“Get him away from my daughter.”
The room went silent.
Marco stared.
“Elena?”
She backed against me as though my oldest friend had walked into the room carrying a weapon.
“You stay away from her.”
Mia started crying harder.
I looked at Marco.
He raised both hands.
“Luca, I have no idea what this is.”
I looked down at Elena.
Her eyes were fixed on him.
Seven years of absence.
Seven years of anger.
Seven years of believing she had betrayed me.
And the first thing she did when she saw Marco Bianchi was try to put her body between him and her child.
I pulled out my phone.
“Ambulance. Now.”
Elena shook her head weakly.
“No.”
“Yes.”
She grabbed my wrist.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
Her gaze dropped toward Mia.
The little girl stood beside us with tears on her cheeks.
Elena’s expression broke.
She whispered so softly I almost missed it.
“He knows who she is.”
I stared at her.
“What does that mean?”
Elena looked into my eyes.
Then she looked at Mia.
The same gray-green.
The same unusual dark ring around the iris.
May you like
Her voice trembled.
“It means Marco knew about your daughter before you did.”
