They Thought I Was Asleep, So I Let Them Keep Lying novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Lockbox

Cal answered first.

"She made us promise to stay and look after you," he said. "That's all."

Devin's eyes went to him and came away fast.

"Look after me from what?"

"From him," Cal said. "She never trusted her brother-in-law with a spare key."

It was a clean answer.

It was too clean, and I was too tired to pull on it.

"Fine," I said. "I'm going through her room."

"Do you want help?" Devin asked.

"No."

I went upstairs and shut the door, and I stood in the middle of my mother's bedroom with the bed still made.

Her robe hung on the hook by the closet.

I put my face in it for a minute.

Then I started on the closet, because Dale had said Joan owed him, and I could not believe a woman who clipped coupons for forty years had hidden eighty thousand dollars.

On the top shelf, behind the winter blankets, I found a gray metal lockbox.

The key was taped to the bottom of it.

My mother had never trusted a hiding place she hadn't made herself.

I sat on the floor and opened it.

There was a lease on top, three pages, and a lawyer's cover letter paper-clipped to the front.

The lease ran five years instead of three.

At the bottom, in my mother's hand, was a line added in blue pen: "Tenancy continues for as long as the owner's daughter wants it."

I read that twice.

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