The Second Life of the Malicious Colonel's Daughter novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Spare Key

The lawyer's last envelope was in the bottom drawer under the register, where I had shoved it with the other three.

I opened it Monday after Marva went to lunch.

The paper inside was thin and brown at the edges.

It was a carbon of the Tolliver brake sheets, the same blue stamp in the corner, DM-4017.

The date under the stamp read the eighth of November.

The convoy's trucks had been serviced on the seventeenth.

On the back, in blocky ink, someone had written a note.

"Hold sheets until QA closes. O.B. signs. M.R."

I read it four times.

I knew Mace Redfern's handwriting.

He had written me a card when I was commissioned, with the same slanted R.

I folded the carbon into a flat square and put it inside the lining of my vest.

Then I sat very still, and I did the thing I had decided to do on the long drive home from Leavenworth.

I did not tell Isaiah.

I told myself it was only until I was sure.

It was not only that.

I wanted to see what he would do when I put something in his way and left him alone with it.

He came by at closing.

Marva had gone home, and the light through the front windows was the color of weak tea.

He had a bag of groceries in one arm, because I had said Friday that I was out of coffee and he apparently remembered.

"You didn't have to," I said.

"I know."

I took the bag and set it on the counter.

Then I took a brass key from the hook behind me and held it out.

He looked at it.

"What is that?"

"The back door of the shop. A spare."

"You're giving me a key."

"I'm giving you a key."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going upstairs to take a bath, and I don't want you to wait on the step."

He took it.

His fingers closed over mine for a second.

"There's a drawer under the register," I said.

"All right."

"Everything my father's lawyer ever sent me is in it. I won't know if you read it."

"I won't."

"I'm just saying it's there."

"Jessamine."

"Yes?"

"I won't."

I went upstairs.

I ran the bath, and I turned the faucet low so I could hear the shop through the floor.

It was quiet for a long time.

At last I crept down the stairs and bent to look through the gap.

He was at the workbench with his back to me.

The drawer under the register stood a quarter inch open, as I had left it.

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