The woman was there, seated in the same place, as if she had known he would come, and when he approached, she looked up at him with eyes filled with patience rather than accusation.
“You want the truth,” she said quietly.
They sat together on the cool stone steps as the sounds of the city carried on around them, and piece by piece she told him her story, revealing that her name was Lucinda Morel, and that many years ago she had been forced to give her daughter up under circumstances shaped by fear and deception, circumstances that had left her believing that child was lost to her forever.
“That child was Isadora,” she said, her voice trembling but steady. “Your wife was my daughter.”
Matteo felt the ground shift beneath him as documents and faded photographs were placed into his shaking hands, each one erasing another layer of certainty he had built his life upon, because the resemblance was undeniable, the truth impossible to ignore.