Chapter 5
The investigation moved faster than I expected.
Maybe because Mr. Price had documents ready.
Maybe because Aunt Claire was furious.
Maybe because Vanessa tried to blame everything on Dad before anyone even arrested her.
By the end of the week, police had searched Dad’s house.
I did not go.
I could not.
Grandma went with Claire and Mr. Price.
She came home carrying Mom’s cedar chest.
The one I had not seen since before the funeral.
It smelled like lavender and old wood.
I opened it on Grandma’s bed.
Inside were Mom’s scarves.
Her recipe cards.
A stack of birthday letters she had written for me before she died.
My breath vanished.
Grandma sat beside me and covered her mouth.
Letters for fifteen.
Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
Nineteen.
Twenty-one.
Wedding day.
First baby.
Hard day.
Read when you forget who you are.
I touched each envelope like it was alive.
Dad had kept them from me.
Not just money.
Not just jewelry.
Words.
My mother’s last words to me.
I opened the one marked nineteen with shaking hands.
My Lily,
If you are reading this, you are older than I can imagine and still my little girl. I hope your father has given you my locket by now. I hope you wear it when you need courage. I hope you know love should never ask you to erase yourself.
I broke.
Not cried.
Broke.
Grandma held me while my whole body folded around the letter.
All the birthdays when I thought Mom had left me nothing new.
All the nights I needed her voice.
All the times Vanessa told me I was clinging to the dead.
Mom had been reaching for me from a box in Dad’s closet.
And he had let me ache.
That night, Noah came to Grandma’s house with a backpack.
He stood on the porch, pale and shaking.
“Can I stay here?”
Grandma pulled him inside immediately.
“What happened?”
He looked at me.
“Vanessa said if I testified, Dad would lose everything and it would be my fault.”
My anger went cold.
“Did Dad hear?”
Noah nodded.
“He didn’t stop her.”
Grandma closed her eyes.
Then she said, “You are staying here.”
Noah slept on the couch.
I sat beside him until he fell asleep.
He looked younger than sixteen.
I wondered how many times I had left him in that house because I was too hurt to go back.
Guilt crawled up my throat.
The next morning, he found me in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For not telling you about the chest.”
I froze.
“You knew?”
His eyes filled.
“I saw it once. Vanessa said Mom’s things made you sick. Dad said not to upset you.”
I breathed slowly.
“Noah, look at me. You were a kid.”
“So were you.”
That sentence split me open in a different way.
Because he was right.
I had been a kid too.
We both had.
And the adults had used our grief to control the story.
I hugged him.
At first he stood stiff.
Then he clung to me.
“I missed you,” he whispered.
“I missed you too.”
May you like
Behind us, Grandma quietly turned away.
But I saw her wipe her eyes.
