Chapter 6 - The Kitchen Drawer
I didn't go to sleep when Daniel told me to. I lay in my bed with my sneakers off and my socks still damp and listened to the house settle. Mom's heels clicked down the hallway and then stopped. The bathroom door closed. Water started running.
I got up and stood in the hallway where the light from the kitchen made a rectangle on the carpet. Daniel was at the counter in his dark shirt with the sleeves still pushed up. His hair was still messed up from the lake. The jewelry box was in his hand.
He hadn't turned on the big kitchen light, just the one over the stove. He kept looking over his shoulder toward Mom's room, then back at the box. I held my breath so he wouldn't hear me.
He tried the drawer by the fridge first. It was the junk drawer, full of takeout menus and batteries. He opened it, then closed it. He tried the one under the microwave where we kept the dish towels. He shook his head.
Then he reached up to the cabinet above the fridge. We never used that one. Mom kept the good platters up there and the drawer underneath it stuck if you didn't pull it right. He had to stretch to get it open. I heard the wood catch and then give.
He placed the small dark box all the way in the back, behind a stack of folded linen napkins we only used at Thanksgiving. He pushed the napkins forward to hide it. He stood there a second with his hand on the drawer handle, like he was making sure it was really hidden.
I stepped back into my room before he turned around. My heart was thudding loud enough I thought he'd hear it through the wall. I didn't understand why he didn't just give it back to Mom. I thought maybe if it stayed hidden, Richard couldn't ask for it again.
I waited until I heard Daniel's bedroom door click. The water in Mom's bathroom was still running.
Her bedroom door was open a crack. The light was on. She'd left her magenta dress draped over the end of her bed, and her strappy heels were kicked off by the closet. She was in the bathroom with the door closed, and steam was coming out from under it.
I shouldn't have gone in. She'd told me a hundred times not to go through her things. But I kept thinking about the box and where I'd seen it before, except I hadn't seen it before. Not really.
I slipped in and went to her dresser. On top there was a framed photo of her as a kid with my grandparents at the lake house, and next to it a small wooden jewelry tray with her earrings in it. I opened the top drawer where she kept photos. Not the ones on her phone, the real printed ones in envelopes.
The first envelope was birthday parties. The second was Christmas. The third was thicker, older, with a rubber band around it. The photos inside were faded at the edges.
I flipped through them fast, my hands a little shaky. Mom at college. Mom and Daniel when he was a baby. And then one that stopped me.
It was my grandmother's bedroom at the lake house. I recognized the white curtains and the big dresser with the round mirror. My grandmother was sitting at the edge of her bed, smiling, and on top of that dresser, clear as day, was the same small dark reddish-brown box. The lid was a little open. It wasn't on grass then. It was where it belonged.
I stared at it. The same size, the same color, the same little hinge on the back. It had been hers.
Behind me the bathroom water shut off. I heard Mom shift and reach for a towel.
I slipped the photo back into the envelope and put it exactly where I'd found it, my fingers leaving a little sweat mark on the paper. I closed the drawer soft.
She came out in her robe, her hair wrapped in a towel. She saw me standing by her dresser and stopped.
"Ethan? What are you doing in here?" she said, not mad, just tired.
I didn't know what to say that wouldn't get me in trouble. "I couldn't sleep," I said.
She looked at the dress on her bed and then at me. Her eyes were red like she'd been crying but was trying not to.
"Go on back to bed, honey," she said quietly. "Everything's okay."
I nodded and walked past her into the hall. She didn't know I'd seen the photo. She didn't know Daniel had hidden the box.
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Back in my room I sat on the edge of my bed and pressed my feet into the carpet. I finally understood. The box wasn't Richard's at all. It was my grandmother's. He'd just been holding it, waiting to use it. And now Daniel had put it where Richard couldn't get it, high up where Mom never looked.
I lay back down and listened to Mom move around her room, putting things away. I didn't feel sleepy anymore. I felt like I'd learned something I wasn't supposed to know yet, and I wasn't sure what we were supposed to do with it.
