Chapter 13: The Empty Safe

Elliot's POV

I drove to Chestnut Hill at five in the morning with my tuxedo shirt stuck to my back.

I had dropped Nina at Bea's door an hour before.

She had said good night through a crack of four inches, and I had stood on the landing and understood that was fair.

The kitchen light was on at the house.

My mother sat at the counter in her robe with a pot of tea and her reading glasses on.

She did not look surprised to see me.

"You haven't slept," she said. "Sit. I'll pour you a cup."

"Open the safe, Mother."

"Darling, it's five in the morning."

"You told me the agreement was in the safe. You said it in front of two hundred people."

She set the pot down and looked at me over her glasses.

Then she stood, tied her robe, and walked to my father's study.

The safe was behind his portrait.

She turned the dial without hurry and swung the door wide.

I looked in.

There was a velvet tray of her pearls, a binder of trust papers, and a stack of deeds.

There was no agreement.

"I told you three years ago I burned it," she said.

"You told me she signed it."

"I told you what you needed to hear."

She said it quietly, and for a moment I did not understand that she had admitted anything.

"She never signed a thing," I said.

"No."

I put my hand on the desk.

I had spent three years behind a locked door because of one sentence she said to me in a hallway.

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