Chapter 9 - THE KEY
“What key?”
Rebecca was silent for a moment. Then she asked me to put Dad on speaker.
My mother had rented a small bank box before she died. Rebecca had been named as a person who could help me access it after I turned eighteen. She’d mailed a key and the paperwork months ago.
The letter in the bin had no key.
Dad spread the contents of the box across the table. “Denise took it.”
Rebecca lived three hours away. She offered to drive to us with copies of the paperwork and meet us at the bank the next morning.
I was excited to hear her voice. I was also angry. For years I’d believed she’d stopped calling because she no longer wanted to know me. She’d been trying all along.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said. “I should have come sooner.”
“I could’ve called you too.”
“I know. We’ll talk about that when I see you.”
After the call, I went upstairs to take off my graduation gown. My room still looked exactly as it had that morning. The scissors were gone. The ruined silk lay on my bed inside a clean bag.
Mia stood in the doorway.
“I didn’t know about your aunt,” she said.
I kept folding the gown.
“I wanted Dad to come to my senior dance last spring,” she continued. “He said he had to pick you up from your scholarship workshop. Mom told me you asked him to choose.”
“I didn’t even know your dance was that night.”
Mia nodded. She looked embarrassed, then frustrated with herself for looking embarrassed.
“That doesn’t excuse what I did,” she said.
“No.”
She reached into her pocket and set a small brass key on my desk.
“Mom kept it in her jewelry box. I took it when she was packing.”
I stared at it. “Why didn’t you give it to me downstairs?”
“Because I wanted you to listen to me first.”
For once, Mia seemed to hear how that sounded. She stepped back.
“I’m giving it to you now.”
May you like
Dad called up from below. Denise had texted him. She said she would come back that night to collect the rest of her things.
Her last line read: TELL CLAIRE TO CHECK WHAT HER MOTHER REALLY LEFT HER.
