Chapter 4 - The Name Nathan Had Been Searching For
Gabriel and Maribel met the next morning at a coffee shop in Pilsen.
April colored butterflies on a napkin while the adults talked.
Nathan had hired a private archival researcher four months earlier.
He had been searching for records involving a woman named Elena Cruz.
Maribel’s mother.
“Why?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“He never told me everything.”
“Then why contact me?”
“Because three days before his hemorrhage, he gave me your name.”
Maribel stared at him.
“How did he have it?”
“Employment directory.”
Her stomach tightened.
Nathan had found her through the hospital.
“What did he want?”
“He said if anything happened before he spoke to you, I was supposed to make sure you received something.”
“What?”
Gabriel looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t have it.”
Maribel laughed without humor.
“Then this is useless.”
“He put it somewhere he believed only he could access.”
“The roof?”
Gabriel looked up sharply.
That was enough.
“The butterfly garden,” Maribel said.
Gabriel lowered his voice.
“How do you know about that?”
“April found the caterpillar there.”
The garden was officially closed for winter maintenance.
But Environmental Services had access because cleaning crews serviced the rooftop event space beside it.
April had wandered through an unlocked service door while Maribel was changing liners.
Maribel had been furious.
Now she remembered what April said when she returned.
A man’s picture is under the flowers.
Maribel had assumed she meant Nathan’s donor plaque.
“What was Nathan looking into?” she asked.
Gabriel hesitated.
“A death.”
“Whose?”
“Sophie’s.”
Nathan’s daughter.
Eight years earlier, Sophie Vale had undergone a relatively routine procedure at Lakeshore University Medical Center.
She developed catastrophic complications afterward and died.
The family had publicly called it an unpredictable reaction.
Nathan donated millions to pediatric rehabilitation and created the rooftop butterfly garden in her name.
“What does my mother have to do with his daughter?”
Gabriel looked at April.
Then back to Maribel.
“Elena worked here.”
Maribel stared at him.
“My mother cleaned offices.”
“She worked in pediatric patient transport before that.”
Maribel knew.
Her mother rarely talked about those years.
“She was here the night Sophie died,” Gabriel said.
A memory surfaced.
Her mother sitting at their tiny kitchen table years earlier, crying over a newspaper article about Nathan’s donation.
Maribel had been twenty-one.
She had asked why.
Elena said only:
Some rich people spend money because it’s easier than saying they’re sorry.
Maribel had forgotten the sentence.
Until now.
“Did my mother cause something?”
“No.”
Gabriel answered too fast.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
Maribel stood.
“Then stop bringing pieces of my dead mother into this unless you’re ready to tell me why.”
Gabriel stood too.
“Nathan believed Elena tried to warn him.”
“About what?”
Gabriel reached into his coat.
This time he did have something.
A photocopy of an old hospital incident log.
One line was highlighted.
Transport aide Elena Cruz requested attending physician review after observing unexpected medication administration prior to patient deterioration.
The attending physician listed on the page was Dr. Harold Grant.
Maribel stared at the name.
May you like
Grant had known her mother.
And when he looked at Maribel’s name badge in Nathan’s room, he had never once acted as though he recognized it.
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