Chapter 6 - WHAT MY FATHER HID
We did not open the door again.
Julian arrived twelve minutes later.
This time I watched him approach from the window.
No dramatic entrance.
No mysterious black car.
He came in the same gray sedan he had driven to dinner.
Yet the moment he stepped inside, Mom looked at him differently.
Not as the man who had made her laugh for months.
As Aaron Blake.
The man connected to the worst night of her life.
He placed a worn envelope on the table.
“My letter from David.”
Mom didn’t touch it.
“Why did Martin bring the music box?”
“I think he wanted to know whether you already had it.”
“Why?”
Julian examined the numbers beneath the lining.
Then he turned the box upside down.
One of the tiny felt feet was slightly raised.
Using a butter knife, he carefully loosened it.
A narrow brass key fell onto the table.
I stared.
“You knew that was there?”
“No.”
Mom picked up the key.
There was a number stamped along the side.
A bank deposit key.
Julian leaned back.
“This is what David meant by the last account.”
Mom finally opened my father’s letter.
The handwriting matched the old envelope.
Most of it repeated what Julian had already told us.
But the final paragraph did not.
Sarah,
If Claire is old enough to understand this when you read it, tell her I did not leave because I stopped loving her.
I left because the person who discovered what Aaron and I were doing was someone you trusted more than me.
Mom’s hands trembled.
Below that was another sentence.
I never proved Martin took the files, but I saw his employee number attached to an authorization that should not have existed.
The number from the music box.
Mom looked devastated.
Julian spoke softly.
“David suspected Martin was involved.”
“Suspected,” Mom said. “That isn’t proof.”
“No.”
I turned the brass key over.
“Maybe this is.”
Julian nodded.
“The bank that used keys like this closed years ago, but its deposit boxes were transferred.”
“To where?”
He looked at me.
“First National on Hawthorne.”
Mom went pale again.
“What?”
“Sarah?”
She stared at the key.
May you like
Then she said:
“Martin has worked at First National for eighteen years.”
