Reborn: I Let My Mother Suffer the Price of Her Favoritism novel · Chapter 14 of 32
Chapter 14: Under the Advent Linens
Everett's POV
St. Brendan's smelled the way it had yesterday, of candle wax and floor polish.
Yesterday I had stood at the front of it with my hands shaking and a woman in a sling objecting to my marriage.
Today I came in through the side door behind a deputy and the pastor's wife.
Callie walked next to me and did not say a word.
I know what she looks like when she is holding herself together by one thread, because I have watched her do it at three dinners and never once asked what the thread was.
The sacristy was a narrow room behind the altar with a sink, a wall of wooden cabinets and a rack of white vestments.
The pastor's wife went down on one knee in front of the bottom cabinet, which was labeled ADVENT in brass.
"It sticks," she said. "Forty years it's stuck."
She pulled, and the door gave with a crack.
There were purple altar cloths in the cabinet, folded in tissue.
Behind them, against the back panel, sat a gray steel box about the size of a bread loaf.
The deputy put on gloves before he touched it.
I held out the brass key with the masking tape, and he took it without a word.
The lock turned easily.
Somebody had oiled it.
The first thing in the box was a rubber-banded stack of pharmacy receipts, thick as a brick.
Under it was another, and another, twelve bundles, one for each year.
I did the arithmetic without wanting to.
That was a receipt for every month of Sloane's twelve years.
"Officer," I said. "May I photograph what you take out? I'll stand where you tell me."
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