Chapter 6 - Box Fourteen

Jo stared at my phone. "I swear your mother called me."

"Then somebody pretended to be her."

Adrian leaned forward. "Where is she now?"

"Home, I hope."

I called. No answer. I called again and got voicemail. The three of us left money under our coffee cups and drove to my mother's small house across town.

Her porch light was on. Her sewing machine hummed inside. I pushed the door open and found the room empty, the machine running against a scrap of blue fabric. A mug of tea was still warm. The back door hung open.

"Mom?"

The house smelled like cinnamon and ironing steam. My mother, Elena Reyes, always set two cups when she expected a guest. There were two cups on the table.

Jo pointed to a muddy boot print by the kitchen door. "Not hers."

On the refrigerator, held up by a strawberry magnet, was an envelope with my name. Inside lay a photograph of me at seven, sitting on my father's shoulders in front of Bellwether. Behind the photograph someone had written: YOUR FATHER WAS NOT THE FIRST.

"What does that mean?" Adrian asked.

I turned it over again. My mother's handwriting was neat and slanted; this was hers. Beneath the sentence she'd drawn a little lighthouse. She used that symbol on notes when I was a kid, a secret sign that meant the words mattered.

"B-14," I said. "It's a storage box at the old ferry terminal. Mom rented one years ago."

"Then why tell you not to go?" Jo asked.

"Maybe she didn't."

We reached the terminal before dawn. Box B-14 stood along a wall of rusted lockers. I fitted in Conrad's key. Inside was a battered cassette recorder, a sealed packet, and a child's red mitten.

I knew that mitten. I had lost its twin in the Bellwether fire.

The recorder clicked when Adrian pressed PLAY. My father's voice came through a wash of static.

"Elena, if you're hearing this, they finally found the second ledger. Don't trust Conrad. Don't trust the police report. And please, please don't tell Mara what happened to her brother until she's old enough to forgive us."

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I gripped the edge of the locker.

"My brother?" I whispered.