Chapter 4 - THE SAFETY DEPOSIT BOX
The gold watch gleamed under the dim lights of the coat room.
I stopped breathing. That watch was supposed to be in a secure vault at Chase Bank. I had the only key on my keychain.
“Take off the watch, Christopher,” I said, my voice dangerously low.
He yanked his sleeve down, his jaw tightening. “It was sitting in a dark box, Sarah. It deserves to be worn. I’m honoring your father.”
“You have no right to touch it.”
“I have the right to do whatever I want!” he snapped, finally dropping the calm facade. “I built this foundation! Your mother gave us pennies, and I turned it into an empire! She owed me! You owe me!”
A loud knock on the coat room door made us both jump.
“Mom?” Ethan’s voice was small, muffled through the heavy wood. “Are you okay?”
Christopher glared at me, pointing a warning finger at my face. “We play nice for the boy. But when we get home, we are having a very different conversation. Understand?”
He unlocked the door and threw it open, instantly pasting on his warm, fatherly smile. “Everything’s fine, buddy. Mom just had trouble finding her ticket.”
I grabbed my coat, shoved the rosary and the photo deep into my pocket, and walked past him.
“We’re taking a taxi, Ethan,” I said without looking back.
“Sarah!” Christopher warned.
“You can stay with your Artistic Director. We’re leaving.”
The ride home to the suburbs was silent. Ethan fell asleep against my shoulder, his small hands still clutching his grandmother’s music notebook. I stared out the window at the passing city lights, my mind connecting terrifying dots.
If Christopher had accessed my mother’s safety deposit box, he hadn’t just taken the watch.
The original deed to my mother’s house was in there. The patent for the foundation’s early curriculum. Everything that legally protected my family’s legacy.
The next morning, I didn’t wait for Christopher to wake up in the guest room. I dropped Ethan off at school and drove straight to Chase Bank.
My hands shook as the vault manager led me to Box 412.
I inserted my key. He inserted his.
I pulled the long metal drawer out and carried it to a private viewing room.
I opened the lid.
Empty.
The watch was gone. The deed was gone. The foundation papers were gone.
But as I stared into the bare metal tin, I noticed something stuck in the back corner. It was a folded piece of paper, jammed tightly into the hinge.
I pulled it out carefully.
It wasn’t a legal document.
It was a child’s drawing.
It was drawn in heavy crayon. A picture of a small brick house with a blue door. Two stick figures stood outside: a tall woman with dark hair, and a small child holding a red balloon.
It was my mother’s house.
But Ethan hadn’t drawn this. Ethan had never drawn stick figures like this.
I flipped the paper over.
Written in the clumsy, oversized handwriting of a six-year-old child was a name.
Leo Reed.
Reed. Vanessa’s last name.
May you like
I stumbled back into the chair, the air knocked from my lungs. Vanessa didn’t just know my mother. Vanessa had a child.
And my mother had hidden his drawing in her most secure vault.
