Chapter 10: The Safe

The house on Hawthorne Street was dark except for one lamp upstairs.

I stood in the back garden at eleven at night with Daphne's spare key in my fist and a flashlight in my teeth.

Rory was parked at the corner in his truck.

I had told him he could wait there, and that was all he could do for me tonight.

He had said, "Okay," and he had kept his hands on the wheel.

I let myself in through the kitchen.

I knew every board in this house.

I had scrubbed this floor on my knees, twice a week, for five years.

The stairs creaked on the fourth step and the ninth, and I stepped over both.

Phyllis's bedroom door stood open a hand's width.

The lamp was on, but the room was empty, and her bed was made.

The closet door was ajar.

The little gray safe sat on the floor behind a row of her good shoes.

I knelt in front of it.

My palm still had the numbers on it in smeared blue ink.

The code was zero, three, zero, nine.

The lock clicked.

Inside were the deed to the house, a velvet box, a stack of savings bonds, and nine cream-colored envelopes tied with a ribbon.

On the front of each, in shaky blue ink, was my name.

Ada Mead, in care of Tallmadge, Hawthorne Street.

My eyes blurred.

The postmarks went back five years, the first one stamped three weeks after my wedding, the last one only seven weeks old.

I touched the ribbon.

"I wondered how long you'd take," Phyllis said behind me.

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