Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN IN THE WATER
The sponge floated beside my hand.
For several seconds, I could only stare at the small crescent-shaped mark on the woman’s shoulder.
It was pale brown, no larger than the nail on my little finger.
But I knew it.
I had known it my entire life.
My hands began shaking so violently that water dripped from my rubber gloves onto the marble floor.
The woman looked over her shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
I couldn’t answer.
I stumbled backward until my hip struck the vanity.
Then I tore off the gloves.
Not pulled.
Tore.
One landed near the bathtub. The other disappeared beneath a towel.
I ran into my dressing room.
Behind a row of jewelry boxes Alejandro had bought me over the years sat a small wooden case I had never shown him.
I opened it.
Inside was a tarnished silver locket.
My mother’s locket.
I had carried it through high school, college, my wedding, two miscarriages, the birth of my son, and every terrible anniversary of the day I had been told she was dead.
Twenty years.
Twenty years of hiding it because opening it hurt too much.
I pressed the tiny clasp.
The locket clicked open.
On one side was a faded photograph of me at five years old, smiling with two missing front teeth.
On the other was a photograph of my mother.
Elena Vargas.
Her dark hair fell over one shoulder.
She was laughing at whoever had taken the picture.
And there, just above the neckline of her summer dress, was the edge of the crescent-shaped birthmark.
My knees nearly buckled.
“No,” I whispered.
It couldn’t be.
My mother had died when I was sixteen.
That was what my father told me.
There had been an accident.
A fire.
A body too badly damaged for me to see.
A funeral with a closed coffin.
I remembered standing beside my father while rain ran down the black umbrella above us.
I remembered lowering a white rose onto the coffin.
I remembered screaming into my pillow that night until my throat hurt.
I had spent twenty years missing a dead woman.
Behind me, bathwater moved.
“Miss?”
I turned.
The woman was watching me.
Something had changed in her face.
Not recognition exactly.
Fear.
I walked toward her slowly.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Lucy.”
“No. Before Lucy.”
Her expression tightened.
“I told your husband. I don’t remember.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Try.”
She looked uncomfortable.
“Maybe sixty.”
My mother would have been sixty-one.
The room tilted.
I gripped the counter.
“Do you remember having children?”
The woman’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
“Do you remember Chicago?”
“I’ve lived here a long time.”
“No. Before the streets. Before the shelters.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I remember noise.”
“What kind of noise?”
“Metal.”
My heart hammered.
“Anything else?”
“Dust.”
I took another step.
“Anything else?”
She rubbed her forehead.
“A yellow light.”
“Please.”
“I’m trying.”
“Did you have a daughter?”
The woman suddenly looked at me.
Tears gathered in her eyes without warning.
“I don’t know.”
I held out the locket.
Her gaze dropped to it.
At first, nothing happened.
Then her face went completely white.
Her hand rose from the bathwater.
“That…”
I could barely breathe.
“What?”
She stared at the locket.
“I know that.”
My knees finally gave out.
I sat hard on the edge of the tub.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please.”
She reached toward it, then stopped as though afraid to touch it.
“There was a little girl.”
The bathroom door opened.
Alejandro stepped inside.
“Mariana?”
I turned toward him.
Whatever he saw on my face made him stop.
“What happened?”
I held up the locket.
Then I pointed at the woman’s shoulder.
Alejandro looked.
His expression changed.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
That frightened me more than anything.
“You knew,” I whispered.
“Mariana—”
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
My entire body went cold.
“You brought her here because you knew?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You ordered me to bathe her.”
“I needed to see the mark.”
My voice rose.
“You needed to see it?”
The woman in the tub pulled her arms around herself.
Alejandro closed the bathroom door behind him.
“Three days ago, I found something.”
“What?”
“At the soup kitchen.”
“You said you met her today.”
“I did meet her today.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He exhaled.
“One of the volunteers showed me a box of belongings they keep for regular visitors. Lucy had been coming there for months. Someone found an old photograph in her coat.”
My pulse roared in my ears.
“What photograph?”
Alejandro reached inside his jacket.
He removed a folded plastic evidence sleeve.
Inside was a photograph.
I grabbed it.
The image had been damaged by water, but I recognized the woman immediately.
My mother.
She was younger.
Standing beside a chain-link fence at a construction site.
Written across the bottom in faded ink were four words.
For Mariana. My little moon.
I stopped breathing.
Only one person had called me that.
My mother.
“Where did she get this?” I demanded.
Alejandro looked at the woman.
“She doesn’t remember.”
I turned back to her.
Her eyes were fixed on the photograph.
Suddenly she made a sound.
Not a word.
A broken gasp.
Her fingers gripped the side of the tub.
“Moon.”
I crouched beside her.
“What did you say?”
Her lips trembled.
“Little moon.”
My vision blurred.
“Who said that?”
She pressed both hands to her temples.
“A girl.”
“What girl?”
“Dark hair.”
I grabbed the locket and opened it again.
I pointed at the photograph of my childhood face.
“This girl?”
She stared.
For ten seconds, she didn’t move.
Then a tear slid down her cheek.
Another followed.
“I…”
Her breathing became shallow.
Alejandro stepped forward.
“Mariana, don’t push her.”
I ignored him.
“What was her name?”
The woman squeezed her eyes shut.
“Please.”
“What was the little girl’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Mariana.”
Alejandro reached for me.
I pulled away.
“What was her name?”
The woman suddenly cried out.
A raw sound filled the room.
Then she whispered one word.
“Mari.”
My heart stopped.
Nobody called me Mari anymore.
Nobody except my mother had ever called me Mari.
I dropped the locket.
It hit the floor with a metallic crack.
The woman looked at me.
Really looked at me.
Her hands began shaking.
“Mari?”
I fell against the bathtub.
“My mother called me that.”
The woman covered her mouth.
I reached for her shoulder.
This time there were no gloves between us.
No disgust.
No distance.
Only skin.
Only tears.
“My mother had this mark.”
She sobbed.
“I’m sorry.”
“My mother disappeared twenty years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My father told me she died.”
“I don’t know who I am.”
I touched her face.
Beneath the grime and the sun damage, beneath the gray hair and the years of suffering, I suddenly saw something I should have noticed before.
Her eyes.
Brown with a ring of green near the pupils.
Exactly like mine.
“Mom?”
The word came out of me as a whisper.
She stared at me helplessly.
“I want to remember.”
Then her face twisted in pain.
She clutched the side of her head.
Alejandro moved faster than I did.
He caught her before she slipped beneath the water.
“Call Dr. Pierce,” he shouted.
I was already reaching for my phone.
The woman began muttering.
At first I couldn’t understand.
Then I heard a name.
“Rafael.”
Alejandro froze.
I looked at him.
“What did she say?”
The woman’s eyes fluttered open.
She stared directly at my husband.
“Rafael Salazar.”
Alejandro slowly released the breath in his lungs.
That was his father’s name.
His father had died twenty years ago.
In a construction-site explosion.
The same week my mother supposedly died.
Lucy grabbed Alejandro’s wrist.
Her voice was barely audible.
“Rafael tried to save me.”
Then she looked at me.
Fear flooded her face.
“But the woman found us.”
“What woman?” I asked.
Her nails dug into Alejandro’s skin.
“The woman in white.”
May you like
A violent tremor passed through her.
“She said my daughter would grow up believing I was dead.”
