They Sold Me, Then My Dead Mother Came to Take Me Home novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Corbin's Key

They held my brother in a small gray room with a table bolted to the floor.

Jonas walked me to the door and stopped.

"I'll be right outside," he said.

"I know."

"Say the word and I come in."

"I know that too," I said.

He took his hand off my back, and I went in alone.

Corbin sat on the far side of the table in an orange jumpsuit.

He had lost his smirk somewhere in the night.

His blond hair was flat, his eyes were rimmed red, and he looked about fifteen years old.

"You came," he said.

"You asked."

"I didn't think you would."

"Neither did I."

A deputy stood by the wall with his arms folded.

I sat down across from my brother and set my cane against the table.

"You said you'd tell me where the real books are," I said. "Start there."

"There's a safe deposit box at a bank in Boise."

"Whose name?"

"Pine Ridge Supply." He almost laughed. "The same account your signature was on. Dad figured nobody would look for the evidence inside the fraud."

"Do you have the key?"

He pushed a small brass key across the table with two fingers.

"It was taped under the drawer in his study. The one with the false bottom. I took it Saturday when the old man was in the shower."

I closed my hand on it.

"Why?"

"Because Mom tried to put it all on me."

"Did she?"

"At the courthouse. 'I watched him practice it.'" He mimicked her voice, and it came out thin and ugly. "She sat at that table with me, Mara. She told me to do it. She said it was for the family, and then she sat in a courtroom and told a judge it was me."

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