Chapter 7 – The Morning Before Her Graduation

“Whose approval?”

Olivia held the envelope toward Camille.

Camille’s gaze fell to the handwriting.

“Mine,” she admitted.

Lorenzo remained seated.

“Why would my daughter need your permission to receive a letter from her mother?”

Camille swallowed.

“I was trying to determine whether it was appropriate to give it to her.”

Olivia stared at her.

“Appropriate?”

“The letter discusses family matters. The foundation. Your father’s responsibilities.”

“My mother wrote it for me.”

“I understand that.”

“No. You don’t.”

Olivia pressed the empty envelope against her chest.

“If you understood, you would’ve given it to me.”

Camille looked away.

Lorenzo closed the binder.

“Where is the letter?”

“I don’t know where every piece of paper ended up.”

“Then start looking.”

Camille’s expression hardened.

“I’ve spent months organizing this wedding, and now everything is apparently on trial because of a few old documents.”

Lorenzo stood.

“The wedding is on hold.”

The room went silent.

Camille stared at him.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“We have guests coming from three states. The rehearsal is tomorrow. The church is booked.”

“I’ll handle the arrangements.”

“You’ll embarrass me in front of everybody.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

“Camille, my daughter spent two years believing I didn’t love her. I think we’re well past the point where embarrassment should be our greatest concern.”

Her eyes filled.

He spoke more gently.

“This doesn’t have to become a public spectacle. But I’m not marrying you while we’re still discovering things you’ve hidden from us.”

Camille walked out.

This time, nobody followed her.

Olivia sat beside her mother’s jewelry box, staring at the empty envelope.

“Do you think she read it?”

Lorenzo nodded.

“I think that’s likely.”

“Do you think Mom wrote something bad about me?”

He turned toward her.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because Camille said there were things in the notebook we wouldn’t want to hear.”

Lorenzo took the envelope from her.

“Your mother wasn’t perfect, Liv. Neither am I. But there was never a day she wasn’t proud to be your mother.”

Olivia wiped her eyes.

“I miss her.”

“I know.”

He hesitated.

“Would it help if I told you I still do, too?”

She looked at him.

Then nodded.

For the first time, I saw father and daughter sharing their grief instead of trying to protect each other from it.

The following morning, Olivia returned to the mansion carrying the cardboard box Camille had delivered to her apartment.

All thirty-one letters were inside.

She’d kept them.

Every one.

We spread them across Lorenzo’s dining table, arranging them by date.

Some were several pages long.

Others contained only a few sentences.

There was a birthday card.

A holiday greeting.

A note about a difficult exam.

A letter written after Olivia’s first patient died during clinical training.

Lorenzo sat quietly, reading only what she gave him permission to open.

He didn’t try to make excuses anymore.

At one point, he picked up the letter about her first clinical loss.

Olivia had written:

I understand now why Mom’s nurses looked so tired sometimes. I also understand why they came back the next morning.

Lorenzo read the sentence and covered his eyes.

Olivia moved her chair closer.

“You don’t have to read them all today.”

He nodded.

“I want to.”

“I know. But you don’t have to catch up on two years in one morning.”

He looked at her.

“That’s a very grown-up thing to say.”

She smiled.

“Apparently they teach us things in community college.”

He laughed.

A small, genuine laugh.

Then she became serious.

“I need to go to school this afternoon. I have to speak with the program director about that complaint.”

“I’ll drive you if you’d like.”

She considered it.

“Okay. But I’m going inside alone.”

“Agreed.”

Before they left, I helped Olivia compare the foundation documents with her original nursing school acceptance letter.

She’d kept the acceptance letter with her returned correspondence because it was the first thing she’d mailed to her father after their fight.

The paper had been damaged by rain.

A tiny portion of her signature had blurred where a drop of water had landed.

I placed it beside the supposed advisory resignation.

The signatures looked similar.

Too similar.

The same long curve beneath the letter M.

The same unusually short final stroke.

And the same tiny interruption in the ink.

“Olivia,” I said, “look at this.”

She leaned closer.

Then her eyes widened.

“That’s not just my signature.”

She pointed at the blurred mark.

“That’s the signature from my acceptance letter.”

Lorenzo examined both pages.

The copied mark appeared in precisely the same place.

He didn’t need me to explain what that suggested.

Camille hadn’t merely written Olivia’s name.

Someone had reproduced her actual signature from a letter meant for her father.

Lorenzo placed both documents in a clear folder.

“This needs independent examination.”

Olivia nodded.

“And the board needs to know before Monday.”

“I’ll make sure they do.”

At the college that afternoon, Olivia met privately with her program director while Lorenzo and I waited in the public lobby.

He’d insisted I take the afternoon off with pay.

I told him I hadn’t planned to spend my day at a nursing school.

He replied that neither had he.

It was the closest thing to a joke he’d made all day.

When Olivia returned, she carried a written statement confirming that the misconduct complaint had been dismissed for lack of evidence.

She also had something new.

“The complaint was submitted through the foundation office,” she said.

Lorenzo stood.

“Are they certain?”

“They showed me the covering letter. The school won’t identify whoever prepared the report, but it came from the office coordinating the Moretti fund.”

She looked at her father.

“I asked them to keep the records. I don’t want them destroyed just because my last name is Moretti.”

He nodded.

“Good.”

Then she looked down.

“The program director said something else.”

“What?”

“The person who submitted the complaint asked whether disciplinary action could delay my graduation.”

Lorenzo’s face became very still.

Olivia swallowed.

“They weren’t just trying to embarrass me, Dad.”

She looked toward the folded graduation gown in her bag.

“Somebody wanted me to miss Saturday.”

We returned to the mansion just before dinner.

Camille was sitting alone in the upstairs sitting room.

She had been sorting through the remaining cartons.

On the table lay Rosa’s blue notebook.

The two missing pages had been returned to its center.

Beside them was a sealed yellow envelope.

Camille looked at Olivia.

“I found it.”

Olivia stopped breathing for a moment.

“Mom’s letter?”

Camille nodded.

“I should have given it to you.”

She held out the envelope.

Olivia didn’t take it immediately.

“Have you read it?”

Camille looked at Lorenzo.

Then back at Olivia.

“Yes.”

Olivia’s voice was barely audible.

“Why did you keep it?”

Camille’s eyes filled.

“Because when I read what your mother wanted, I knew you could change everything.”

She placed the envelope on the table.

“And I was afraid you’d take away the only thing in this family that felt like mine.”

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