Chapter 9: The Safe

Silvan's POV

I did not say a word on the drive back from the Sanborn house.

She sat with the crayon drawing flat on her knee and her thumb pressed to the corner.

When we pulled into the yard she said, "What envelope?"

"Give me an hour."

"Silvan."

"One hour. Then I'll answer everything."

She looked at me for a long moment, and she went up the stairs to the loft.

I walked into the shop and closed the door and stood in the dark with my hands on a half-planked hull.

I had said it to Rhett's face, in front of his lawyer.

I want her.

Four years I had kept it behind my teeth, and it came out of me in a front hall in front of a lawyer.

I did not regret it.

I regretted that I had said it before I told her the rest.

My sister's safe sat behind the bench, a gray steel box bolted to the floor.

I opened it with the combination I had never needed to write down.

Two things lay inside.

A white envelope with a clinic's name in the corner, and under it a thicker one, sealed, in Lila's handwriting.

I took out the thick one.

Four years since the funeral, and I still knew the loops of that handwriting better than my own.

On the front she had written: "For Rochelle."

Under it: "Give this to her only after she has chosen Poppy herself, with nobody making her. If she signs their paper, burn it."

I had watched her choose.

I had watched her put the silver pen down, very straight, in front of a hundred and forty people.

I stood there with it in my hand, and my knees felt strange.

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