Chapter 5: What Was Hidden in the Walls
Karen moved into the guest room that night.
She didn't ask.
She didn't explain.
She simply took a pillow from the main bedroom, walked down the hall, and closed the door behind her.
My father didn't stop her.
He put me to bed himself.
Sat on the edge of the mattress until my breathing slowed.
I pretended to sleep because I could tell he needed me to.
When I heard him walk back down the hall, I opened my eyes.
I lay there listening to the house.
Grandma stayed.
She slept on the sofa with a blanket my father brought her, and in the morning she was already up when I came downstairs, standing at the kitchen counter with a cup of tea, looking out the window at the backyard.
"Did you sleep?" I asked her.
"A little," she said.
She looked down at me.
"Are you hungry?"
"Is Dad awake?"
"He never went to sleep."
I found him at the dining table with the letter open in front of him and his laptop beside it.
There were handwritten notes on a yellow pad.
A coffee cup that had been empty for a while.
"Dad."
He looked up.
His eyes were tired but focused.
"Come sit with me," he said.
I sat across from him.
He looked at me the way he sometimes did when he was trying to decide how much to say.
"Your mom was very smart," he said finally.
"I know."
"She found something that I should have found.
And she didn't tell me because she didn't want me to carry it while she was still here." He pressed his thumb against the edge of the letter.
"She wanted to protect me.
Even then."
"What did she find?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"Money that was supposed to be yours," he said.
"That she had set aside for you.
For school, for later, for whatever you needed." He paused.
"It was moved.
Without her permission.
Without mine."
"Karen took it?"
He didn't answer that directly.
"Someone moved it.
And your mom traced where it went."
"Where?"
"To a man who helped Karen before I knew her.
Who she told me she hadn't spoken to in years." He closed the laptop.
"She lied."
I didn't say anything.
"Your grandmother kept the outer letter like your mom asked.
But the documentation — the actual records your mom copied — those are somewhere in this house." He looked at me steadily.
"Your mom hid them here.
Before she went into the hospital the last time.
She told your grandmother the general location but not the exact place."
I sat up straighter.
"She hid them here?
In our house?"
"Yes."
"Does Karen know?"
"I think that's why she wanted to stay," he said.
"After your mom passed.
I thought she loved me.
I think part of her was looking."
The house felt different after he said that.
Like the walls had been listening for years.
"Then we have to find them first," I said.
He looked at me — really looked at me — and for just a second something in his face broke open and then closed again.
"Yes," he said.
"We do."
We started in the study.
My father went through the bookshelves while I checked the lower drawers of the old oak desk that had been my mother's.
Grandma stood in the doorway, thinking.
"She liked things that looked ordinary," Grandma said.
"She wouldn't have hidden it somewhere dramatic.
She would have hidden it somewhere no one would think to look twice."
I pulled open the bottom drawer.
Pens.
A stapler.
An old birthday card I'd made her in kindergarten with a lopsided heart on the front.
I stopped.
I picked up the card.
The back of it was slightly thicker than it should have been.
"Dad," I said.
He crossed the room in four steps.
I peeled back the card's back panel carefully.
Inside, folded into a tight square, was a USB drive taped to a single sheet of paper.
On the paper, in my mother's handwriting:
*For Daniel.
Everything is here.
I'm sorry I ran out of time.*
My father took it from my hands.
May you like
He didn't speak.
From down the hall came the sound of Karen's door opening.
