Page 94 of The Unraveling of Julia

Courtney gasped, covering her mouth. “Somebody beat themboth.”

“This is awful.” Julia flashed on the underground cell. She wondered if she’d been thinking about it the wrong way, topsy-turvy. “What if Rossiwasn’timprisoning the girl because she was an abusive mother? What if she wasprotectingthe girl,hidingher from an abusive man? Someone who was abusing them both.” Julia felt the revelation come over her, changing everything she thought before. “Rossi could have raised the girl here, in the middle of nowhere. No one even knew she had a child. What if Rossi kept the child a secret, not because she was crazy and reclusive, but because she wanted her child to stay safe?”

“She could’ve moved here to get away from the abuser. To get them both away.” Courtney nodded, her expression grave. “A lot of women leave when the man starts abusing the child. That’s the last straw, and the mom gets them both out.”

“That makes sense here.” Julia’s mind raced. “Rossi had enough money to live on her own. Maybe she got it from him, for all we know. So she comes here to the villa. She never lets the child off the property. She puts thegirl in the cell when she thinks her abuser might be around. God knows, it’s still wrong, it’s still disgusting, and it’s still terrifying for the girl—”

“But Rossi doesn’t do it because she was abusive. She does it to protect her daughter. She was a good mother.”

“I don’t know aboutthat.” Julia couldn’t shake the horror of the underground cell. “You weren’t down there. You didn’t see it.”

“I get it, but we didn’t know as much about domestic violence before. Maybe this was the best she could do back then. I don’t know what the law in Italy was. I doubt you could get restraining orders.” Courtney mulled it over. “Besides, to get a restraining order, she’d have to reveal where she was. Maybe she kept to herself because she had to. She was hiding from him.”

Julia felt a stab of guilt. “So Rossi went about it in the wrong way, but she wasn’t an abuser, she was a victim.”

“I feel for her. I feel for the daughter, too.”

Julia did, too, trying to sort it out. “If there’s no kidnapping scheme, then why was Rossi driving around at night?”

“What if the girl ran away? That could be why Rossi drove around at night, looking for her.” Courtney fell quiet for a moment. “Do you remember Scooter, that chihuahua Paul and I had? He used to get out from under the fence. We drove around at night for months. We finally got him back.”

“So Rossi was driving around looking for her daughter Patrizia, not for children to prey on.” Julia realized it was just as likely, when before she’d believed the exact opposite. “Wait, the timing is off. Anna Mattia told me that Rossi drove around at night, so that had to have been in the past eleven years. By then, Patrizia would have been long gone.”

“Maybe Rossi kept driving around looking, anyway. Maybe she never gave up. I wouldn’t. Or maybe by then Rossi had succumbed to her delusions or the drug they were giving her.”

Julia nodded, stricken. “Another possibility is that the abuser found them and abducted the girl, then Rossi drove everywhere looking for her.”

“That could be true, too.”

Julia picked up Rossi’s passport, opening it. “If we’re right about the scenario, the passport names are real. We’re positing that she was with an abusive guy, runs away, and hides here with the child. She wants to hide her identity, too, so she changes her name. Emilia Rossi is a fake name. Elena Ritorno is her real name.” Julia began to process the first fact she had about her birth mother, if itwasher birth mother. “My birth mother could be Patrizia Rossi.”

“You’re almost there, honey. I swear, you’re going to find her, sooner or later.” Courtney touched her shoulder, and tears came to Julia’s eyes. She had so many emotions she couldn’t parse them all. Shedidfeel like she was getting closer to the truth, because if she turned outnotto be related to Rossi/Ritorno or to Patrizia, then that would be a truth, too.

“I’m going to call Poppy now.” Julia got out her phone. “I told her to search under Emilia Rossi and now she should search under Elena Ritorno, too.”

“Look at you, Action Jackson.”

“Darn tootin’.” Julia found Poppy’s number, and the call was answered after one ring. “Hi, this is Julia Pritzker.”

“Oh Julia,” Poppy said, in her cool British accent. “I was just about to call you. I’ve liaised with a colleague in the States, and she tells me that your birth certificate was amended. Did you realize that?”

“I guess so,” Julia answered, trying to remember what her birth certificate looked like. She realized she should’ve brought it with her. “I assumed that was because I’m adopted.”

“Not necessarily. Amended birth certificates are permitted in Pennsylvania, among other states. An amended birth certificate should show your correct place of birth, but I found out that the agency throughwhich you were most likely adopted was International Child Services in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which was privately run.”

“Okay.” Julia hadn’t even known the name of the agency that had handled her adoption.

“Unfortunately, it’s since been shut down after litigation over fraudulent irregularities. I’m in the process of obtaining the legal papers to understand the particulars. I don’t have them as yet.”

“Oh no, what does this mean?” Julia asked, alarmed.

Courtney frowned.

“It means your birth certificate was amended to state that you were born in Philadelphia, but it may not be where you were actually born. That would be the type of irregularity that would get an adoption agency shut down. In my experience, it wasn’t atypical at that time.”

“So where was I born?”

“I don’t know. I’ll keep investigating.”

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