Chapter 12
“He said your mother had come to ask for help.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“Then why did you keep quiet?”
Dominic looked at me, and for the first time since we had met, I saw the full cost of his silence.
“Because by then, my father was dying.
Vanessa had just lost our mother.
I was trying to keep the family from collapsing.
I told myself I would investigate when things settled down.”
“Did they?”
“No.”
“They never do.”
“No.”
A strange sadness passed through his eyes.
Not self-pity.
Recognition.
I looked again at the letter.
“If my mother knew you remembered, why leave this in your father’s study?”
“She may not have left it there.”
“What do you mean?”
“The envelope was inside a folder of property records.
The folder had been moved at least once.”
“Moved by whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was the letter addressed to me?”
“Your name was on it.”
“Then she meant for me to have it.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she give it to me?”
“Maybe she tried.”
The thought struck deep.
My mother had spent years trying to tell me something, and I had been too young, too angry, or too distracted to understand.
Maybe the truth had been standing beside me in the shape of ordinary conversations and unfinished sentences.
Vanessa stepped closer.
“There’s something else.”
Dominic turned sharply toward her.
“Vanessa.”
“You said she deserved to know.”
“What else?”
I asked.
Vanessa reached inside her jacket again.
This time, she pulled out a small brass key.
It was old and tarnished, attached to a faded blue thread.
My mother had tied blue thread around everything important.
The spare house key.
The envelope containing my birth certificate.
The tiny jewelry box where she kept my first baby tooth.
I stared at it.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was taped beneath the folder,” Vanessa said.
“I didn’t see it at first.
Dominic found it when we went back through the study this afternoon.”
“You went back today?”
“We thought it might fit one of the old cabinets.”
Dominic’s expression had become guarded.
“Which cabinet?”
“The one behind the bookshelves,” he said.
I looked between them.
“You’re telling me there’s a hidden cabinet in his father’s study?”
“Not hidden,” Dominic said.
“Concealed.”
“That is not better.”
“It was built into the wall.
My father used it for documents.”
“Did you open it?”