Chapter 14: The Folder

At ten o'clock the house was dark except for the moon lamp in my room.

I put on my socks and went down the fourteen stairs on the outer edges, where they don't creak.

Alana was waiting at the bottom with a flashlight pointed at the floor.

"Grandma Maureen's asleep in the guest room," she whispered. "Craig's meeting runs until midnight."

"Where's Eli?"

"In his crib, with the baby monitor in my pocket."

She tapped her pocket, and it hissed softly.

The study was at the back of the house, behind a door that was always shut.

Alana turned the knob and it opened.

"It's never locked," she said. "She just counts on nobody going in."

The room smelled like peppermint and lemon polish.

There was a rolltop desk, and a green lamp, and a wall of file drawers with brass labels.

One label said EICHELBERGER, J.

Alana pulled that drawer open with two fingers.

"I looked at this on Saturday," she said. "When you were in the car with Craig."

"You went through her files?"

"I went through yours." Her voice shook. "I thought, if I'm going to marry into this family, I'd better know what's in it."

She laid a thick manila folder on the desk and clicked on the green lamp.

My name was on the tab in Grandma Maureen's round writing.

Inside were my school papers, my vaccination card, and a drawing of a horse I had made when I was five.

Alana turned them over until she reached the back.

"Here," she said.

It was a single sheet of heavy paper with a blue logo in the corner.

Ohio Children's Heart Clinic.

I read the first line, and the room tilted a little.

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