Chapter 6
Mrs. Alvarez opened her front door before Ryan could knock twice. Melissa placed the diaper bag on the step, then held June against her shoulder for one last, trembling breath. When she handed the baby over, June made a small, offended sound, as if she already disapproved of being left out of the argument.
“Call us if she needs anything,” Melissa said.
“I will. Go find what you came for.”
Ryan had barely started the car before Melissa turned to watch Mrs. Alvarez carry June inside. She kept looking at the house in the side mirror until the street curved and hid it from view.
The envelope Ryan had found was tucked inside his coat. He hadn’t opened it. Neither had I asked again about the handwriting; whatever memory it had stirred in him, he was keeping it clamped behind his teeth.
“You said the cottage is being cleared tomorrow,” I said.
“Tomorrow evening.” Ryan tightened both hands around the wheel. “Arthur wants us to think we’re out of time.”
“He changed the lock once already,” Melissa said. “That means he’s expecting us.”
The road dipped toward the lake, where bare branches stitched black lines across the gray afternoon. Our parents’ cottage appeared between them, low and weather-beaten, its porch sagging toward the water. A fresh brass padlock gleamed on the front door.
Ryan stopped the car beyond the cottage and cut the engine.
“Dad showed me another way in,” he said. “He called it the service entrance.”
The walk around back was narrow with weeds and wet leaves. My shoes sank into the soft ground. I kept one hand pressed against my sore abdomen, angry at my body for reminding me I’d only just given birth, angrier still that I’d left June behind because a dead woman’s name had been written in a hidden book somewhere.
Behind the cottage, Ryan knelt by a wooden hatch nearly swallowed by ivy. He pulled at it. The first tug did nothing; the second broke the damp seal with a groan.
Melissa shone her phone into the black opening.
“Tell me you remember this correctly.”
“I remember Dad crawling in here to fix a pipe,” Ryan said. “I was ten. He told me not to tell Mom.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He told you everything,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Ryan glanced at me. The hurt in his face came and went too quickly to name.
“Not everything,” he said.
He went in first. Melissa followed, then I lowered myself carefully through the hatch, the damp wood pressing cold against my palms. The cramped passage smelled of mud, rust, and old leaves. Ryan’s phone light skimmed over pipes and a sagging shelf before catching the edge of a door.
He eased it open.
The cottage’s kitchen had been stripped of its curtains. Dust lay in pale drifts across the counters, and the old wall clock had stopped at 3:17. A stack of empty boxes sat by the back door. On one, in black marker, Arthur had written KEEP.
Ryan read it and let out a sharp breath.
“Of course he labeled the empty box.”
We searched fast. Melissa checked the pantry and the drawers; I lifted cushions and opened cabinets, finding only brittle receipts and a deck of cards stuck together with age. Ryan went down the hall, testing each closet as if the right one might give way to his father’s voice.
“Here,” he called.
A narrow cupboard stood beside the stairs. Behind a row of paint cans, he found a metal cashbox with a broken latch. It held no cash. Inside lay a black ledger, its cover curled at the corners.
Melissa leaned over his shoulder. “What is it?”
Ryan opened it.
The pages were crowded with dates, amounts, and short handwritten notes. He flipped through carefully, his thumb blackening with dust. Then he stopped.
NORA.
The name sat in the margin beside a date and a dollar figure. Below it, more entries—some months apart, some only weeks. Not a story, not an explanation. Just a trail of sums and dates that made my stomach pull tight.
Melissa read the page twice.
“Why would anyone be writing down money beside her name?”
Ryan’s jaw flexed. He turned back several pages, searching. The entries continued, irregular but deliberate. None said where the money went. None told us who had received it.
A car door slammed outside.
All three of us froze.
Through the kitchen window, a dark pickup stood by the porch. Arthur’s truck.
Ryan closed the ledger. Melissa snatched her phone up, but the screen showed no signal.
“Back entrance,” Ryan whispered.
The front door opened. Arthur’s footsteps crossed the porch, then stopped in the kitchen.
“Ryan?” he called. “I know you’re in here.”
Ryan shoved the ledger toward me. I folded it against my chest, feeling its hard cover through my coat.
Arthur appeared in the doorway. His eyes went first to Ryan, then to the ledger in my arms.
“You have no right to take that.”
“Then tell us what it is,” Ryan said.
Arthur moved toward us. Ryan stepped into his path.
“I warned you to stay out of the cottage.”
“You warned us about everything except the truth.”
Arthur’s face darkened. “You’re stealing from your own family.”
“Is that what you call this?” I held the ledger up. “Because Nora’s name is all over it.”
His eyes flicked to the open book. For one brief second, his anger faltered—not into grief, not into shame, but calculation. Then he reached for the ledger.
Melissa shoved the back door open. Ryan caught Arthur’s wrist before he could grab me. The two men crashed into the kitchen table, sending a stack of boxes skidding across the floor.
“Go!” Ryan shouted.
I bolted out the back door with Melissa. We scrambled through the weeds toward the hatch, the ledger hugged to my ribs. Behind us, Arthur shouted Ryan’s name. Then came a thud, a curse, and Ryan’s boots pounding after us.
We reached the car together. Ryan threw himself into the driver’s seat, breathless, his knuckles scraped red. Arthur came around the cottage, shouting that we were thieves, that the ledger belonged to him, that he would make us pay for taking it.
Ryan started the engine.
May you like
For several seconds none of us spoke. The cottage shrank in the rear window, but Arthur stayed on the porch, one hand lifted in warning.
At the roadside, Ryan pulled over. I opened the ledger on my knees and held the pages against the fading light. The last visible entry was dated 2001—years after our parents had told us Nora was dead.
