A cabinet stood against the far wall, dark wood, the kind that used to be in our old house before the fire. I had not seen it in seventeen years. My knees nearly buckled.
“Why would you keep this?” I murmured. “Why would you hide this down here?”
I reached for the upper-right drawer. It stuck for a moment, then slid open.
The drawer held more than I could process. A stack of yellowed letters tied with twine. A faded insurance document with red stamps across the top. And photographs.
I lifted the first letter with shaking fingers.
Photographs of my parents standing in the driveway of the summer house, faces twisted in anger, my grandfather between them with his hands raised.
I lifted the first letter with shaking fingers.
“Daniel, you cannot keep ignoring the payments. The bank will take everything if you do not respond by the end of the month. Please call me. Dad.”
The next was worse. A reply in my father’s handwriting.
“Stay out of it. The house is mine. I will handle it my way.”
Margaret’s note had a phone number written beneath her name.
I dug deeper and found a folded sheet at the bottom, the paper soft from being touched many times. Harold’s handwriting wobbled across the top.
“To my grandchildren, if you ever find this.”
My vision blurred as I read.
“I went to the summer house that morning. There was an argument. The kitchen. Then the blast came. I survived. They did not.”
The words swam. I couldn’t read further. I shoved the page back into the drawer with the rest of it still unread and ran upstairs.
I knew where to find her. Margaret’s note had a phone number written beneath her name.
“Why did you wait so long?”
She answered on the second ring.
“I wondered if you would call,” she said.
“Who are you?”
“I lived next door to the summer house for forty years. I have wondered about that morning every day since.”
“Tell me. Now.”
She paused.
“I came outside after the blast. Your grandfather was already on the lawn, on his knees, watching the kitchen burn. I assumed he had run out before it went up. I never saw him at the porch door. I only know he did not go back in after I got there.”
I drove back to Grandpa’s house in a fog, the confession still folded in my coat pocket.
“Why did you wait so long?”
“Because he was raising you,” she said quietly. “And I told myself that was punishment enough, if there was anything to punish. But when he died, I could not carry the not-knowing anymore.”
I hung up without answering.
I drove back to Grandpa’s house in a fog, the confession still folded in my coat pocket. Lily’s car was in the driveway when I pulled in.
She met me at the door, her eyes red.
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling you.”
I almost told her. The words sat at the back of my throat, hot and bitter.
“I needed to be alone.”
“Elena, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
I almost told her. The words sat at the back of my throat, hot and bitter. I thought of the prom dress hanging in my closet, the careful hand-stitched hem.
“Nothing,” I lied. “I just needed air.”
She watched me for a long moment.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
I could end it here. Burn the lie, burn the proof.
“I know.”
She went upstairs, and I walked into the kitchen. I pulled the confession from my pocket and laid it flat on the counter beside the sink.
I struck a match.
The flame flickered between my fingers. I could end it here. Burn the lie, burn the proof, let my siblings keep the grandfather they remembered. Let Lily believe in the man who braided her hair.
But my hand wouldn’t move.
