Chapter 4 - The Code
I stood in front of the open painting for a full minute before I touched the safe.
The bedroom was dim compared to the bathroom, the morning light cut off by the heavy drapes. My bare feet had gone cold on the wood floor. Behind me, the sconces in the marble bathroom were still on, throwing a thin white line across the rug. I could feel the air on my scalp every time the vent kicked in, a sting that kept pulling my attention back to what was missing.
The safe was the same as it had been for three years. Dark blue-gray front, silver keypad to the right of the dial. I had picked it out with Michael after the break-in two streets over. He had wanted something simple. I had wanted something that didn't look like a safe.
My fingers shook when I lifted them.
I pressed the first number. The key beeped, too loud in the quiet. I stopped and listened for footsteps in the hall, for catering carts, for anyone awake. The house stayed silent. I pressed the second number, then the third. Each beep landed hard in my chest. The robe slipped off my shoulder and I pulled it back up with my left hand without looking away from the pad.
Michael's birth year. Then the extra two digits we had added so it wouldn't be obvious. I had entered it a dozen times before for tax papers and jewelry and the deed copies. That morning my thumb kept missing.
I got it wrong once. The pad flashed red and gave that low error tone. I closed my eyes.
I made myself breathe. In through my nose, slow, the way I had in the bathroom when I felt my lips start to tighten. I opened my eyes and entered it again, careful, one press at a time. Green light.
I wrapped my right hand around the dial. The metal was cold. I turned left, then right, listening for the tumblers. It caught halfway and I thought I had misremembered the sequence, panic rising fast up my throat. I eased back and turned again, steadier this time. It gave.
The door swung outward with a soft, heavy movement.
For a second I didn't look inside. I just stared at the dark opening and felt the cool air coming off the steel. My scalp throbbed under the bathroom lights still glaring behind me. She shaved my head. The words were still sitting in my mouth from the bathroom, quiet and tense. I hadn't said Sabrina's name yet, not out loud in that room. But it was there.
I looked down.
The ivory envelope sat centered on the single shelf, exactly where I had left it in March. Thick stock, the kind from the stationery store downtown that embossed if you pressed too hard with a pen. My handwriting crossed the front in dark blue ink. Wedding Gift — Michael and Sabrina — $22,000,000. Underneath, in smaller script, my initials and the date. Beside it was the cashier's check folder and nothing else. I had cleared everything else out weeks ago so there would be no confusion on the day.
Twenty-two million. It had taken two years with the lawyers to structure it right. Not a show check for photographs. A real transfer, ready to hand over after the vows.
I reached in with both hands. The paper edge was sharp against my fingertips. I lifted it just enough to feel the weight, the folded documents inside shifting. I didn't pull it out of the safe. I held it there, over the steel shelf, my cream sleeves brushing the door.
My reflection caught faintly in the silver dial. No hair to frame it. Just pale skin and redness along the side, the stubble I had seen in the profile close-up of the mirror. I looked away.
I thought about this morning. Walking barefoot toward the bathroom mirror, expecting another ordinary wedding morning. Seeing the bare scalp instead. The irritation, the missed patches that meant it had been done fast, in sleep. Today, she marries my son. That was the fact sitting next to the envelope. Not last month. Not someday. Today.
If I gave this envelope to them after the ceremony, I would smile for the photographer while my head burned under a wig. If I didn't, Michael would ask why in front of everyone.
May you like
But first. That was what I had said to myself in the bathroom doorway, before I walked to the painting. But first, look at what I was about to give away.
I set the envelope back down for a moment, then picked it up again and held it flat against my chest, over the robe. The paper was cool through the silk. I stood there with the safe open and the bedroom door still shut, listening to the house start to wake — a distant door, water running somewhere below — and I understood that I could not hand this over until I knew how last night had happened.
