Chapter 2 - THE LOCKED DRAWER IN THE HOME OFFICE
Richard lunged toward the hallway, but I was closer.
I didn't run. I moved with the cold, precise clarity of a woman who had just realized her entire life was a crime scene. I stepped into his home office and slammed the heavy oak door behind me, locking the deadbolt just as his shoulder hit the wood from the outside.
“Claire, open this door!” Richard shouted, the brass doorknob rattling violently. “You are having an episode! You’re confused!”
“I’m not confused, Richard,” I said, my voice eerily calm as I stared at his mahogany desk. “I’ve just woken up.”
The office was meticulously organized. My husband was a man who kept his golf clubs polished and his tax returns filed by color. He didn't make careless mistakes. If he was trying to declare me mentally incompetent to hide forty-two thousand dollars, the proof wasn't going to be sitting on top of his desk.
“Linda, get the spare key from the garage!” Richard yelled through the door.
“I won't do that, Richard,” Linda’s voice drifted through the wood, trembling but firm. “I think you need to tell her the truth.”
“Both of you are crazy!” he screamed, kicking the bottom of the door.
I ignored the pounding. I walked around the desk and began pulling drawers. Pens, stationary, client files. All perfectly normal. Then I reached the bottom right drawer. It was locked.
Not just locked with the standard desk key. He had installed a heavy, steel padlock.
“Claire!” Richard’s voice dropped an octave, shifting from anger to a manufactured, sickeningly sweet tone. “Honey, please. Your stress levels are too high. Let me come in. I’ll make us some tea. We can talk about your sister.”
He was already practicing his lines. He was talking to me the way one talks to a dementia patient. He was building his narrative for the neighbors, for our daughter, for the attorney.
I looked around the room for something to break the padlock. My eyes landed on the heavy bronze bookend shaped like a stallion, a gift I had bought him for our tenth anniversary.
I picked it up. It weighed at least five pounds.
“I’m opening the bottom drawer, Richard,” I announced loudly.
The silence from the hallway was instantaneous. The rattling of the doorknob stopped.
“Don't,” Richard whispered through the door. It wasn't a threat. It was absolute panic. “Claire, I swear to God, if you open that, you will destroy our family.”
I raised the bronze stallion and brought it down hard on the padlock. It took three crushing blows before the steel shackle snapped.
I dropped the bookend and pulled the drawer open.
There were no bank statements inside. There was no attorney's paperwork about my mental state.
There were only two items sitting on the bare wood.
The first was a velvet jewelry box. My heart caught in my throat. It looked exactly like the box that held my mother’s diamond tennis bracelet—the heirloom she had left me when she passed away, which I kept hidden in my closet safe.
I opened the box. It was empty. But resting inside the velvet groove was a small, yellow pawn shop ticket stamped with yesterday’s date.
He hadn't just stolen from his ex-wife. He had stolen my mother’s memory.
But it was the second item that made the air freeze in my lungs.
It was a glossy, 8x10 photograph.
I picked it up with shaking hands. It was a picture taken at a local park. Richard was sitting on a bench, smiling warmly, holding a little girl who looked to be about five years old.
The little girl had my husband’s exact nose. And she was wearing my mother’s diamond tennis bracelet wrapped twice around her tiny wrist.
“Claire,” Richard’s voice came through the door, dangerously quiet now. “I have the spare key. I’m coming in.”
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Before I could hide the photograph, the deadbolt clicked, and the door swung open.
TITLE: THE LITTLE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
