Chapter 8 - The Drawer with the Silver Key

Detective Ortiz arranged for us to retrieve essential belongings with an officer present. Ethan had been ordered to stay away during the visit.

The Maple House looked exactly as I had left it: a stack of Sophie's drawings on the refrigerator, a chipped coffee mug beside the sink, and the staircase I could not look at for more than a second.

Dad put his hand on my elbow.

"We can turn around," he said.

"No. I want my daughter's fox. And I want that drawer."

In Ethan's upstairs office, a narrow filing cabinet sat behind the desk. Sophie had described the bottom compartment, the one with the brass lock.

Her key fit.

Inside were photographs of a furnished brick townhouse in another county, a utility bill addressed to a man named Daniel Reed, and a folder marked TRANSITION.

The folder listed our bank accounts, Sophie's school schedule, and a proposed transfer to a private school near the townhouse.

Next to her name someone had written: AFTER LEAH.

I felt the room tilt.

"Does this mean he planned to take her?" I asked.

Tessa, who had accompanied us, scanned the pages. "It means he made plans he never discussed with you. We'll preserve the documents and request records through the case."

A photo slid from the folder and landed near my shoe.

It showed Ethan outside the townhouse with a dark-haired woman in a gray coat. I knew her face from the Westbridge website. She was their acquisitions director, Elena Voss.

The officer photographed the contents before they went into an evidence envelope.

On the back of the photograph was a date from six weeks earlier and a handwritten note:

THE NEW PLACE WILL BE READY BEFORE CLOSING.

For nine years, Ethan had promised we would grow old in the house my grandmother left me.

Now I knew he had planned a different future while I cooked his dinners and packed our daughter's lunches.

As we left, Dad noticed a folded invoice wedged inside a desk calendar.

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It wasn't for the townhouse.

It was a payment to a private security company for removal of the Maple House's indoor cameras, scheduled for the morning before my fall.