Chapter 5 - WHAT THEY TOOK
The locksmith let us inside just before sunset.
My house smelled wrong.
Not dirty.
Not damaged.
Unfamiliar.
Someone had opened drawers, moved furniture, and sprayed sweet air freshener over the rooms where I had lived for thirty-one years.
Alexander checked the windows.
I went straight to my closet.
The metal box was there.
The watch was not.
Neither were the small gold earrings my husband bought me on our twentieth anniversary.
My savings statements were gone.
So were the original deed and the folder marked ALEXANDER—SCHOOL.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Mom?”
“He gave me that watch when the doctors said there wasn’t much time.”
Alexander crouched in front of me.
“I remember.”
“No.
You remember him wearing it.
You were fourteen when he gave it to me.”
My husband had placed it in my palm and said, Keep something that ticks.
I had wound it every Sunday since.
Alexander stood so abruptly the bed shook.
“I’m calling the police.”
I caught his sleeve.
“First, photograph everything.”
He looked at me.
“I cleaned law offices for twelve years,” I said.
“I heard enough arguments about missing evidence.”
We took pictures.
We listed what was gone.
Then an officer came.
She listened without rushing me.
She photographed the changed lock and took the closing notice.
She said the allegations about the documents would need investigators.
She did not promise arrests.
She did give me a report number.
That mattered.
After she left, Alexander made coffee.
I took an old business card from the kitchen drawer.
Miriam Shaw.
Attorney.
“You called her Thursday?”
I nodded.
“She told me to keep every message and avoid signing anything.
She’s meeting us tomorrow.”
He stared at the card.
“You were doing all this alone.”
“I wasn’t sure whether you would believe me.”
He looked down.
The silence between us hurt worse than shouting.
Then his phone buzzed.
Bianca.
He put it on speaker.
“Your mother has turned this into a circus,” she said.
“Come home.”
“I’m staying here tonight.”
“You can’t leave me with this.”
“With what?”
A pause.
Then Bianca said, very quietly, “Your name is on the loan, Alex.”
He stopped moving.
“What loan?”
May you like
I watched his hand tighten around the phone.
“The one Dad couldn’t get without you.”
