Chapter 5 - The Sleeping Beauty
The room inside was small, immaculate, and quiet.
A single lamp burned on a wooden nightstand, casting a soft, golden light over white walls. A small window looked out over the falling snow in the pine forest outside.
Sitting in an armchair by the window, wrapped in a pale blue wool shawl, was a woman.
Her dark hair was long, threaded with thin strands of silver, falling softly over her shoulders. She was thin, her hands small and fragile as she held a wooden paintbrush, staring aimlessly at a blank canvas resting on an easel before her.
Elena.
Dominic pressed his hand against the glass. A choked sound escaped his throat—a sound of such profound, agonizing love and pain that Miles, standing five feet behind him, turned his head away to give his master privacy.
Dominic unlocked the heavy oak door and pushed it open.
The door creaked softly on its hinges.
The woman by the window didn't turn around immediately. She was used to nurses stepping inside at 5:00 a.m. to administer her daily sedatives—the chemical cocktail that kept her mind foggy, keeping her from remembering the night her baby was stolen from her arms.
"I don't want the medicine today, Nurse Clara," the woman whispered softly. Her voice was thin, fragile, but it carried that exact melodic sweetness that had haunted Dominic’s dreams for six long years. "The snow is falling... I want to remember the snow..."
Dominic couldn't speak. The breath caught in his lungs, his chest heaving as he took three quiet steps into the room.
"Elena..." he rasped.
The paintbrush slipped from her thin fingers, clattering against the hardwood floor.
The woman froze. Her entire body went rigid.
Slowly, terrifyingly, as if she were afraid that turning her head would shatter a beautiful dream, Elena Moretti turned around in her chair.
Her dark brown eyes locked onto the tall man standing in the center of her room.
She stared at his face—at his silver-gray eyes, his broad shoulders, his dark suit stained with rain, and the tears cutting through the dust on his cheeks.
"D-Dominic...?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the heater.
She reached out with a trembling, frail hand, touching the air between them as if testing if he was a phantom. "No... no... Frank said... Frank said you died at the docks six years ago... he said they buried you in Red Hook..."
Dominic dropped to his knees before her chair. He grabbed her frail, cold hands and pressed them against his face, weeping openly, kissing her knuckles, her palms, her wrists.
"I'm here, Elena," Dominic sobbed, his voice breaking into pieces. "I'm alive... I'm here, my love... I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry it took me so long..."
Elena stared at him, tears welling in her dark eyes, streaming down her pale cheeks. The foggy haze induced by six years of sedatives seemed to burn away in a single, miraculous second under the warmth of his touch.
She wrapped her frail arms around his neck, pulling his head against her chest, holding him with all the remaining strength in her body, sobbing hysterically into his dark hair.
"My baby..." Elena cried out, her chest heaving as six years of buried agony burst through her heart. "Dominic... Frank took our baby... he took my little girl..."
Dominic pulled back slightly, framing her face with his large, warm hands, looking into her eyes with a radiant, absolute joy that illuminated the dark room.
"She’s alive, Elena," Dominic whispered, his voice steady and full of life. "She’s here. She brought me your tape."
Elena’s eyes widened in sheer, unbelievable shock. "What...?"
Dominic stood up, turned toward the open doorway, and held out his hand.
"Sophia," Dominic called out softly. "Come here, my sweet girl."
In the doorway, holding Anna Miller’s hand tightly, stood six-year-old Sophie. She wore her faded denim jacket, her small backpack slung over her shoulder, looking into the room with wide, beautiful silver-gray eyes.
Elena gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.
She didn't need a medical test. She didn't need a document.
The moment she looked into the little girl's eyes, Elena saw the face she had kissed for ten short minutes in Room 214 of Saint Agnes Medical before the world went dark.
"Sophia..." Elena whispered, collapsing out of her chair onto her knees on the rug.
Sophie let go of Anna’s hand. She walked slowly into the room, stepping past Dominic, until she was standing right before the weeping woman on the floor.
Sophie pulled the cheap black cassette recorder from her coat sleeve and placed it gently into Elena’s trembling hands.
"I kept it safe," Sophie whispered softly, reaching out her tiny fingers to wipe a tear from Elena’s cheek. "Anna said you were an angel. But you're my mommy, aren't you?"
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Elena wrapped her arms around her daughter, pulling her small body into an embrace so fierce, so loving, and so complete that six years of pain, coldness, and separation evaporated into the warm morning air.
Dominic knelt down beside them, wrapping his broad arms around both his wife and his daughter, holding them against his heart as the first golden rays of the morning sun broke over the snowy peaks outside the window.
