Chapter 7 - THE TICKET
The rusted key sat on the glass table like a live grenade.
Julian stared at it. My father stared at it.
"What is that?" Julian demanded, his voice thick with confusion. "Mother, what is going on?"
Beatrice stood tall, her confidence fully restored. She looked at my father with triumphant malice.
"Go ahead, Elias. Tell your lovely daughter what this key opens. Or has your convenient amnesia flared up again?"
My father stared at the rusted key. He rubbed his temples, his face pale, struggling to pull the memory through the fog. "I... I don't know."
"Oh, please," Beatrice scoffed. She turned to Julian. "This is the key to locker 402 at the Greyhound station downtown. The locker where Elias hid the four million dollars in bearer bonds."
My heart stopped.
"He wasn't an innocent scapegoat, Julian," Beatrice proclaimed, playing the victim perfectly. "Yes, I was at the construction site that night. But I was there to stop him. He was trying to flee the state. When I confronted him, he attacked me. I grabbed a piece of rebar in self-defense and struck him."
Julian looked at my father, horrified. "You attacked my mother?"
"No!" my father shouted, grasping his head. "No, that's not how it happened! I didn't take the money!"
"Then why do I have the key to your stash?" Beatrice countered smoothly. "When you fell, the key dropped from your pocket. I took it. I was too terrified to tell your father the truth about what happened, Julian, so Richard covered for me, saying he was the one who fought Elias. We let everyone believe Elias died in a fire to protect our family from the scandal."
Julian looked sick. He turned to me, his eyes begging me to see reason. "Mariana, you hear her. He’s a thief. He almost killed my mother."
Doubt crept into my mind. I looked at the rusted key. It was a standard, old-fashioned locker key.
Could my father really have been a criminal? Was the man I idolized a monster who abandoned his family for money?
I looked at Beatrice. She was smiling slightly, a smug, victorious look in her eyes.
Something was wrong.
If Beatrice had the key to four million dollars for twenty years... why hadn't she taken the money?
"Wait," I said, my voice cutting through the tension. I stepped toward the coffee table. "If he had the money in a locker, and you had the key... why didn't you give the money back to the company?"
Beatrice’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. "The bonds were traced. It was too risky to cash them immediately. We rebuilt the company without it."
"Liar," I said quietly.
"Excuse me?" Beatrice bristled.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the heavy silver and emerald bracelet.
Beatrice gasped. Her hand flew to her chest, her eyes wide with undeniable terror.
"You didn't strike him in self-defense," I said, holding the bracelet up. "Because when you hit him, this snagged on his heavy work coat and tore off your wrist. He sewed it into the lining of his coat twenty years ago. If you were acting in self-defense, you would have reported it to the police, showed them the injuries. You didn't, because you hit him from behind."
Julian stared at his mother's custom bracelet. He knew it well.
"Mother?" Julian asked, his voice shaking. "You lost that bracelet twenty years ago. You told me it was stolen from your hotel room in Paris."
"It was!" Beatrice shouted, her voice shrill. "He stole it!"
"How could he steal it in Paris if he's been homeless in Chicago for twenty years?" I demanded.
I didn't stop there. I pulled out my faded childhood drawing.
"And he didn't orchestrate the theft. You did." I flipped the drawing over and slammed it onto the glass table next to the rusted key.
Julian leaned down, reading his mother's distinct handwriting.
Take care of the girl, or else.
"You threatened a six-year-old child to force him to take the fall for your embezzlement," I sneered, stepping aggressively toward my mother-in-law.
Beatrice’s face contorted in rage. She snatched her designer handbag from the sofa to leave. "I will not stand here and be interrogated by a gold-digging waitress!"
As she yanked the bag up, the clasp caught on the sofa cushion. The bag spilled open, dumping its contents onto the carpet.
Lipstick. A compact mirror. A wallet.
And a small, blue paper ticket.
Julian bent down and picked it up before his mother could grab it.
He stared at the ticket. The color completely washed out of his face.
"Julian?" I asked. "What is it?"
Julian slowly looked up at his mother. His eyes were shattered, completely hollowed out by betrayal.
"It's a one-way train ticket to Montreal," Julian whispered. He looked at the date stamped in red ink. "For tonight. 11:30 PM."
May you like
Julian stood up, dropping the manila folder of bank records.
"You weren't coming over to bring me police reports, Mother," Julian said, his voice breaking. "You were coming to say goodbye. You're fleeing."
