Chapter 8: The Locked Drawer

My key still opened the front door of the house in Shadyside.

It was Thursday, a little after noon.

His car was gone, and Cornelia had called the shop to say he was at the office until six.

I had checked.

Darby came in behind me with an armful of flattened boxes.

Carl carried a tool bag, because he did not own a coat without a tool in the pocket.

"We take your things and we go," Darby said. "Nobody stands around feeling sad in the hallway."

"I'm not sad," I said.

"You're standing in the hallway."

I was.

I was looking at the coat hooks, where his jacket hung next to the one I wore on Sundays.

Then I went upstairs and pulled out the suitcase from under the bed.

The nursery was down the hall.

I had told myself it would be a spare room until the twelve-week appointment.

The door was shut, and I walked past it.

I took my mother's recipe box and my passport.

I took the gray sweater Darby had given me for my birthday.

I took the folder with my mother's original shop lease, signed years before Cornelia bought the building.

"Does the new owner know about that?" Carl asked, from the doorway.

"Cornelia knows she bought the building."

"And?"

"She never asked what was already signed."

He gave a short laugh through his nose.

Darby looked at him with new suspicion.

Downstairs, I stopped at Nigel's study.

The door was open, and the desk had a gleaming brass lamp and a picture frame turned facing his chair.

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