A new life

Five

Jerry

As soon as Scott left I resumed the reading of some cold cases I had asked to deal with. I wasn't at my best to face new cases but didn't have to go to Florida until early May of the following year, so I had reached an agreement with the Commissioner to dive into cold, unresolved cases hoping to give them a fresh and unbiased look. The one I was reading then was about a little girl gone missing ten years ago. Her parents had just got an ugly divorce and he had been the main suspect but no actual evidence had been found against him.

"Excuse me!"

I lifted my eyes from the file and saw a woman in her mid or late twenties. She was dressed in a quite casual way, and her eyes seemed to dig into me. There was something familiar in her.

Something I just wasn't able to name at the moment.

"Look, if you want to sell something, I'm just not interested." I said dryly.

"No, I don't want to sell anything." She replied calmly "Jerry?." She stared at me, and the door of memory opened wide "Gosh, this isn't easy for me." She went on with a somehow apologetic voice.

"What do you want exactly?"

She took a deep breath and made clear she was feeling embarrassed about all that "I don't know how to start, really."

"What about telling me who are you?" I knew too well who she was.

"Yeah...yeah, sorry. I should have started there. I'm Chiara, Carla's younger sister. I...I was eight or nine when she left, and didn't know a word about her until I read what had happened to her. "

I gave a closer look at the woman. Yeah, there were more than one similarities between her and Carla. And I recalled her asking me to go see her little sister at her school in the very early stages of our relationship.

Chicago 1977

"Jerry, there's something I need to ask you." Carla gave a long shot at her cigarette and rubbed nervously her hand along her hair. We were in bed, right after making love for the very first time.. "I...I don't regret at all leaving my house, life there wasn't exactly a paradise, but there's someone I do really miss. I... I have a younger sister, Chiara, she's just eight now. And she's the only one who could make me go back to my old neighborhood."

I kept silent for some time, completely taken by surprise with Carla's revelation and the moment she had chosen to do it. "Why hadn't you mentioned her before? If she's that important to you..."

"I don't know really, guess I didn't dare until I knew for sure I could trust you. I never mentioned her to Sam, I wanted to keep him unaware of Chiara's existence. Or at least I pretended to do so, Sam has all kinds of means to be aware of everything. " Carla held my hand and looked right into my eyes "I want...no, I need to see her one last time and know she's doing fine without me. I can manage without seeing my folks, but not without seeing Chiara one last time. Please." She was about to cry as I hugged her.

"Okay, we'll go see her if that means so much for you. And if you want to see your folks too, "

"No! I'm telling you, living there wasn't exactly a paradise. If only I could take care of Chiara, I don't want her to make the same mistakes I made." Carla's mood changed suddenly, as she always did when a sensitive topic appeared in the conversation.

"We'll talk about that, but if your parents are alive it will be hard getting her custody. Anyway, I will talk to someone just in case."

"Will you do that?" Carla's eyes shone again with content.

"I don't promise you anything but I will try. And now, which school does Chiara go to?"

"St Helen, it's in my old neighborhood. Look, if you prefer to stay, I understand. I don't want to force you to meet my sister, it's my business after all."

"No." I gently kissed her lips "I'll go with you. If it's important for you, it is for me too."

Carla rested her head on my torso and I couldn't but think what kind of family life would she have had before we had met, to avoid so desperately seeing her parents again.

"Look, I work as a paralegal and know you will probably doubt if I'm the real Chiara or not. And after ...after what happened, that's reason enough to doubt everyone and everything."

"You look so much like Carla when she was your age, there's no doubt about that. But actually, yes, I would need some proofs."

"No problem. This is my I.D card, and you can verify it, I actually prefer if you do." Chiara smiled "I just want to be a part of my nephews' life, and yours too. After all, you are my family too."

"Take it easy about that, okay? My sons have gone through too much and last things they need is more pressure over them."

"I understand, there's no hurry about that. But I would like to meet them, when you think they're ready for it." She took a cigarette and lit it, exactly like Carla used to do."There's one more thing I would want to ask you, Jerry. And this is sort of urgent. You know, when Carla left my folks sort of went crazy with grief and worrying about she being with Baldoni, they had tried their best to keep her from his radar. "

"Wait wait, that wasn't exactly what Carla told me every time your parents appeared in the conversation. She kept saying her life had been something similar to hell."

"It wasn't exactly a quiet peaceful life but it wasn't that bad either." Chiara let go a sort of laugh "I didn't do it that bad, and we have the same parents. Look, I was just eight when she left but I was fully aware, she wanted to go out of the neighborhood and thought Baldoni was her ticket to do it. Then, when things turned for the worst, you came into the picture, and... "

"And she used me." Now it was me the one who lit a cigarette.

"I'm not saying she didn't fall in love with you, she probably did or she wouldn't have stayed for so long. But as time went by, she got tired and needed something new. And she needed a reason to do it. First she escaped home when Baldoni popped his fingers, then you came in, and she told you all that about my parents to keep them at bay. But," Chiara's tone went more serious "my mother cried every night when she left. She's sick now, really sick, and wants to meet her grandsons before she passes away. We read all the story in the papers, and she asked me to come here."

I got up from the armchair in the front porch and went into my house, sensing anger rage growing inside me. For the last eighteen years I hadn't been but Carla's puppet, and she had made me dance to her fiddle. I went back to the porch where Chiara was talking on her phone "No, I'm resolving a particular issue right now. Yeah, yeah, I talked to Mr Gallagher and he'll be there by four, as he had said. Yeah, I'm back in a while. Bye." She turned to me and handed me a visiting card "Sorry, it was a call from my job, you can ask there about me if you want to. And now I'd better be going, but please think about what I asked you." Chiara took her bag and walked to the front fence.

I didn't see or hear the bikes coming.

"Hey Dad!"