Chapter 5: The Drawer Dad Locked
Mom didn’t ask me to forgive her. She sat beside my bed with her purse gripped in both hands, and the key lay between us on the blanket.
The monitors kept up their small, indifferent beeping. I could smell the antiseptic rubbed into my arm and taste the stale coffee Mom had brought from somewhere downstairs.
“You said Dad went home to destroy what he found,” I said. “You’re still here.”
“I am.”
“So what happens now?”
Her eyes moved to the key. “You tell me.”
I almost laughed. Not because anything was funny, but because she’d spent years letting Dad make choices for both of us. Now she was handing me one at four in the morning, like that made the others disappear.
“Are there letters in that drawer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever touch them?”
Her mouth tightened. “Yes.”
I waited.
“Your father put some of Mara’s letters in his desk. The ones he didn’t give you.” She looked at me, then away. “Once, he told me to take a stack to the mailbox. I knew what they were. I knew they were unopened.”
“You mailed them back?”
“I did.”
The answer landed harder than I expected. Maybe because there was no excuse wrapped around it. Just a choice, spoken plainly.
“Why?”
“He said she was trying to hurt us. That she’d made her choice and was using you to get back at him.” Mom pressed her thumb into the purse strap. “I wanted to believe him. It was easier than asking why he was so afraid of you reading her words.”
“And you didn’t ask.”
“No.”
I looked at the key. The blue thread had frayed at one end. “I don’t know what to do with you right now.”
“You don’t have to know.”
She didn’t reach for my hand or tell me I was strong. She only stayed there, letting the silence be mine.
At last, I picked up the key. “Go home.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Get the drawer open. Bring back whatever’s still there.”
“Ethan, your surgery—”
“I know when my surgery is.”
She shut her mouth. The old version of Mom might have used my fear to steer me away from the question. This time, she stood and took the key.
“I’ll call you before I touch anything,” she said. “And I won’t hide what I find.”
“You’ve already hidden enough.”
“I know.”
She left without asking me to say I understood. The door eased shut behind her, and the hospital room settled back into its mechanical rhythm.
I tried to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mom standing at a mailbox with Mara’s unopened letters in her hands.
At 4:36, my phone buzzed.
A photograph filled the screen. The desk drawer stood open, its dark wood scarred around the lock. Inside lay a handful of envelopes, a rubber-banded bundle, and a photograph turned facedown.
Mom’s message read: I’m in the study. I found something with your name on it.
I called her.
She answered in a whisper. “Your father isn’t here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I heard the garage door before I came in. His truck’s gone.”
The room around her looked as if I remembered it: the green-shaded lamp, Dad’s old map of the county, the desk where he’d paid bills and kept every receipt since I was little. Seeing it through her phone made it feel less like a place and more like evidence.
“Show me the envelopes.”
She lifted the phone. Most were old. Some had stamps and Mara’s handwriting; a few had my name written across the front in Mom’s careful block letters. She set them aside one by one.
Then she stopped.
The envelope she held was newer, its edges barely softened. My name crossed the front in Mara’s hand. Her return address sat in the corner.
My stomach clenched.
“Is it sealed?” I asked.
“No.” Mom turned it over. “The flap’s tucked under. There’s writing on it.”
“Can you read it?”
She tilted the phone until the screen blurred, then steadied it. The handwriting looked like mine. The capital M leaned too far left; the last letter of my name trailed off as if I’d lifted the pen too soon.
My thumb went cold against the phone.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“‘Mara—Sunday. Call me when you get this.’”
I stared at the words. I knew the way I made that crooked M. I knew the impatient slash through the t in “get.”
“I wrote that?”
“I think so.”
“But I don’t remember.”
Mom didn’t tell me I must have forgotten. She didn’t say I was tired, or that medicine could make anyone confused. She just held the phone still while I looked at my own handwriting.
“Is there anything inside?” I asked.
“I haven’t opened it.”
“Don’t.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Don’t read it?”
“Not alone. Not until I’m there.”
“All right.”
A floorboard creaked behind her. Mom spun toward the study door. For one breath, neither of us spoke.
Then a man’s voice came from somewhere outside the room.
“What are you doing in there?”
Mom lowered the phone. “Your father’s home.”
“Get out.”
She gathered the envelopes, but her hands shook too badly to stack them. One slid to the floor. Through the phone, I heard footsteps crossing the hall, measured and quick.
“Mom,” I said. “Leave the drawer.”
She snatched up the recent envelope and tucked it into her purse.
The study door opened.
Dad’s voice changed when he saw her—softened, which was worse than shouting. “You had no right to go through my desk.”
“I had the key.”
“You had no right.”
Mom held her ground. “Those letters belong to Ethan.”
A hard silence followed. Then the phone jerked, and her face vanished from my screen. I heard Dad say my name.
The call ended.
I stared at the blank screen, the room suddenly much too bright. Before I could call Mom back, my phone rang.
Dad.
I answered.
“What did you take?” he demanded.
“Nothing. Mom has it.”
“You don’t know what those papers are.”
“I know one is addressed to me.”
“It’s private.”
May you like
“My name was on it.”
He let out a breath that rattled with anger. “I’m coming back to the hospital. You’re not keeping those letters.”
