Chapter 11: The Letters

Melinda went home that night with a plan, and the plan was to be dull.

She ate Leland's soup. She said the retreat sounded sensible. She let him kiss her cheek in the hall and say, "I'm so proud of you, Mindy."

She smiled at Bianca, who couldn't quite meet her eyes.

At one in the morning she walked down the back stairs in the dark.

The study door wasn't locked. The desk had four drawers, and three of them opened.

The fourth had a small brass lock.

Melinda knelt and ran her fingers along the underside of the desktop. She had hidden under this desk at six and at ten and at sixteen.

Her father had taped a spare key behind the left front leg, in case he ever locked himself out of his own life.

The tape had gone yellow. The key was still there.

She opened the drawer and held her phone's light over it.

On top lay a blue folder labeled Harlow Transfer.

Under it was a stack of lined paper, a hundred sheets or more, each one with the same name written across it.

Melinda Harlow Crane.

She picked up the top sheet.

The first signatures were clumsy and slanted. By the fortieth they had a tight, closed D that looked exactly like the one on the deed.

She knew the handwriting.

It was round and bubbly, with a high loop on the h. It had written her notes in the dorm for a year and signed every one with a little star.

Bianca.

A cold, patient anger came up from her stomach and settled in her hands.

She put the sheets in the folder and the folder in her waistband under her shirt.

There was one more thing in the drawer, at the back. A shoebox, tied with a green string.

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