Ambrose nods. "It's how your mother wanted it. She hated hospitals, so I brought the hospital to her."
Sure enough, as I look more closely, I can see the bandage in the crook of my mother's arm and the heart monitor peeking out from behind Ambrose. There's a metal pole with an IV bag next to the bed, too.
Swallowing hard, I flip the page and find two more pictures of me as a baby. I can't be more than a few weeks old. It's hardto tell, but I think I do recognize something of myself in the tiny features.
As I flip through more photos with Ambrose commenting on my age and where they were taken, his staff brings coffee and a platter of baked goods and fruits, but I'm too absorbed in the photos to touch anything.
Ambrose sips his coffee as I turn to the final photo page. I'm older in this one.
Maybe two years old, and there's no denying that it's me. I've seen a handful of photos from after my mother dropped me at that fire station and the girl in those photos is the spitting image of the girl in this one.
Unlike most of the others, this one is posed. In it, I've been put in a pretty white dress, and Ambrose holds me on his lap in an ornate wingback chair. My mother perches on one arm of that chair, gazing down at me with her hands folded in her lap.
She's so beautiful.
"You see, there." Ambrose taps the photo, and I don't realize at first what he's pointing at until I see the necklace. The one my mother is wearing. The exact match for the one currently hanging around my neck.
I lift the album to get a closer look.
"I was always buying her jewelry," Ambrose muses, pouring himself more coffee from a carafe. "Beautiful rings, bracelets, and necklaces…but that simple charm was always her favorite."
He grimaces as he sips more coffee and then sets the cup down to add more sugar.
"You really never found any trace of her?" I ask as I draw the album closed and finally flip my cup upright from its saucer to pour in some coffee.
I'm not asking because I want intel, although I'll take whatever he'll give me. I genuinely want to know. People don't just vanish without a trace. And I know that for at least one day,my mother wasn't lost at all. She didn't look like she was under duress when she dropped me at that fire station. Upset and in a rush, but it wasn't as though she were being held at gunpoint.
But I know better than most that things are not always how they appear. There could've been someone else out of frame. Someone who she might've escaped from and was worried would find her again. Maybe she hadn't meant to leave me at the Bellerose Fire Station forever. Maybe she intended to come back when it was safe.
Ambrose sighs heavily and sets down his cup. "There were a few leads," he says. "But nothing that ever led anywhere."
I sip my coffee and sit back in my chair to look out over the sea. It seems endless, making me feel small. I guess all the money in the world isn't enough to be able to find one woman in a haystack of eight billion people spread over countless square kilometers of Earth.
"I can't imagine what she must've gone through," he says, almost to himself.
"Do you think she's…"
"No," he's quick to reply. "No. I think she's alive out there." He inhales shakily. "I would know if she were gone. I'd feel it. I know I would."
I frown, not liking the unexpected little pang of empathy that aches in my chest.
Remember who this man is and what he's done.He doesn't deserve empathy.
Atticus was right. He's good at pretending to be the good guy. Almost too good.
"I'd do anything to see her again." His voice is so soft. "Anything."
He blinks as if remembering I'm here and releases a hollow laugh, rubbing a spot on his short, trimmed beard. "But if I'velearned anything, it's that this world is a cruel place and doesn't care for fairness or the things I want."
He shifts in his seat. "Which brings me to the real reason I wanted to speak with you this morning."
His eyes meet mine, shining deep umber in the sunlight.
"I'd like to ask if you might consider staying."
I nearly choke on my mouthful of coffee and have to swallow it down. "Stay in Spain?"
Concern etches the skin around his eyes. "Oh no, not here if that's not what you want. But perhaps you could stay at one of my properties in the US?"
