Chapter 3 - WHAT MY BROTHER KNEW
“My brother met your mother?”
The words sounded ridiculous even as I said them.
Kamal kept staring at the note.
“My mother would be sixty-three now.”
“And Daniel is forty.”
“That isn’t the problem.”
“I know.”
The problem was that Kamal’s mother had supposedly disappeared twenty-two years ago.
And my brother had written that she came to see me six months ago.
Except I had never met her.
At least, not knowingly.
“Call Daniel,” Kamal said.
I already had my phone out.
The call connected on the fourth ring.
Daniel answered with the exhausted voice of a man who had probably spent the night in an operating room.
“Isa?”
“Did you meet Kamal Yilmaz’s mother?”
Silence.
Not confusion.
Not laughter.
Silence.
My heart sank.
“Daniel.”
“Where are you?”
“At the gallery.”
“Is Yilmaz there?”
Kamal took one step closer.
“Yes,” I said.
Another silence.
Then my brother sighed.
“I told her this would happen.”
Kamal’s hand curled into a fist.
“Who is she?”
I put Daniel on speaker.
“Tell me.”
“Isa, I need you to listen carefully.”
“I’m done listening carefully. Did you meet his mother?”
“Yes.”
The room seemed to narrow around us.
Kamal did not move.
“When?”
“June.”
“Where?”
“In Boston.”
“Why?”
“She came to the hospital.”
“To see you?”
“No.”
Daniel’s voice changed.
“She came because she thought you were there.”
I gripped the edge of my desk.
“Why would Kamal’s mother be looking for me?”
“Because of Dad.”
That answer landed harder than all the others.
Our father had been dead eight years.
He had been an accountant.
Quiet, cautious, almost painfully ordinary.
He collected stamps and complained about parking tickets.
“What did Dad have to do with this?”
Daniel breathed out slowly.
“More than we knew.”
Kamal’s voice cut in.
“What is your name?”
“Daniel Bennett.”
“I know your name. I’m asking why your father knew my mother.”
Daniel did not answer him.
He spoke to me.
“Isa, do you still have Dad’s Christmas watch?”
My hand went instinctively toward my wrist.
I wasn’t wearing it today.
My father had given me a small gold watch when I graduated from college.
Nothing extravagant.
Its leather strap was cracked now, and it ran three minutes slow.
I only wore it during the holidays because Dad had handed it to me on Christmas morning.
“It’s at my apartment.”
Daniel swore softly.
“What?”
“Do not go there.”
Kamal’s expression changed.
“Why?”
Daniel finally addressed him.
“Because your mother told me the watch contains something men have been searching for since 2004.”
My pulse stumbled.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I never saw it.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because Leyla Yilmaz told me.”
Kamal went white.
Not pale.
White.
Hearing his mother’s name aloud seemed to do something physical to him.
“You saw Leyla?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Kamal closed his eyes.
Only for a second.
When he opened them, whatever emotion had escaped was buried again.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You let her leave?”
Daniel’s tone sharpened.
“She isn’t your prisoner.”
Kamal’s expression turned dangerous.
“She is my mother.”
“And she was terrified of you finding her.”
That struck.
Kamal went absolutely still.
I looked between the phone and his face.
“Why would she be afraid of you?”
Daniel hesitated.
“She wasn’t afraid of him.”
Kamal’s eyes narrowed.
“Then what?”
“She was afraid of what would happen to him if he found her.”
That changed the room.
For one second, Kamal looked less like a feared man and more like the sixteen-year-old boy who had waited for a mother who never came home.
I swallowed.
“What did she tell you about Dad?”
“That he helped her hide something.”
“The watch?”
“Partly.”
“Daniel.”
“I’m telling you what I know.”
“No, you’re telling me just enough to make me panic.”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “I promised her.”
“Not to tell me?”
“Yes.”
Anger rose fast.
“Why does everyone decide what I can handle?”
“Because she was trying to keep you alive.”
I almost laughed.
“That excuse is getting old.”
Kamal glanced at me.
He understood exactly what I meant.
Daniel continued.
“She believed someone inside Yilmaz Fine Arts was searching for an object your father hid.”
I looked around the gallery.
“Inside?”
“Yes.”
My eyes moved instinctively toward Selim.
Then toward the conservation corridor.
Staff.
Curators.
Handlers.
People I had known for three years.
“Who?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Why not?”
“Because she wasn’t sure.”
Kamal took the phone from my hand.
“What object?”
Daniel did not answer.
Kamal’s voice dropped.
“What did my mother give you?”
Another pause.
Then Daniel said, “A train ticket.”
I blinked.
“To where?”
“New York.”
“What date?”
“December twenty-third.”
Today.
I stared at Kamal.
He stared back.
Daniel continued.
“She told me if anything happened around Christmas, I should send Isa to the locker listed on the back.”
“Locker?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Where is the ticket?”
“I mailed it to you three days ago.”
My stomach tightened.
“I didn’t receive anything.”
“Then someone intercepted it.”
Kamal swore under his breath.
Daniel said, “Isa, leave the gallery.”
Kamal’s eyes lifted.
“No.”
I stared at him.
He ignored me.
“Why?” he asked Daniel.
“Because Leyla said if the pearls ever reappeared, the danger was already inside.”
Kamal looked at the necklace.
The pearls.
The pomegranate.
The dead art handler’s face.
Everything shifted again.
The sender wasn’t necessarily outside.
The sender might be someone with access to the gallery.
Someone who knew exactly where I sat.
Someone who could leave the box without being seen.
Selim spoke quietly.
“We need to review internal access.”
Kamal nodded.
I reached for the necklace.
He caught the box first.
“No.”
“I’m not wearing it tomorrow.”
“No.”
“That was your plan.”
“It changed.”
“Because it belonged to your mother?”
“Because whoever sent it knows she is alive.”
I stopped.
Of course.
The necklace was not simply bait for me.
It was a message to Kamal.
Your mother lived.
Your mother contacted Isa.
Now we know.
“What happened in 2004?” I asked.
Kamal’s jaw tightened.
“That is the year my father nearly lost everything.”
“Because your mother disappeared?”
“No.”
He looked toward the snow outside.
“Because six paintings disappeared from a private collection.”
“What paintings?”
“Ottoman miniatures.”
“Worth how much?”
“Today? Perhaps forty million.”
I stared at him.
“And your father was blamed?”
“He was accused of selling them twice.”
“Did he?”
“I spent twenty years believing he didn’t.”
“Believing?”
Kamal looked at me.
“My mother disappeared the same week.”
I understood.
“You thought she took them.”
“My father did.”
The bitterness in his voice made my chest ache.
“So did the police.”
“And you?”
“I was sixteen.”
Not an answer.
Which was an answer.
Before I could say more, Selim’s radio crackled.
One of the security guards spoke rapidly.
Selim’s face changed.
“What?”
He looked at Kamal.
“The archive door was opened eleven minutes ago.”
My heart jumped.
“I was in the archive earlier.”
“Not that archive.”
Kamal was already moving.
“What archive?”
Selim answered me while following.
“The private family archive.”
We hurried downstairs.
The private archive sat behind the conservation studio.
The steel door stood open.
No forced lock.
No damage.
Someone had used a valid access card.
Inside, cabinet drawers had been pulled out.
Papers scattered the floor.
One display case was empty.
Kamal stopped in front of it.
“What was there?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
I looked at the brass identification plate.
LEYLA YILMAZ PERSONAL EFFECTS, 1999–2004.
Kamal’s face became unreadable.
Selim checked the access panel.
“Card number seventeen.”
Kamal’s eyes sharpened.
“Whose?”
Selim stared at the screen.
Then slowly looked at me.
The blood drained from his face.
“Isa’s.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
My staff card was clipped inside my coat pocket.
I pulled it out.
Still there.
Selim looked at the electronic log again.
“It was your card.”
“No.”
Kamal walked to the empty display.
Something remained beneath the glass.
A small red ribbon.
Tied around a brass key.
And beneath it lay another photograph.
This time, the person in the photograph wasn’t me.
It was Kamal.
He looked about sixteen.
May you like
Beside him stood his mother.
And standing behind them, one hand resting on Kamal’s shoulder, was my father.
