Chapter 2 - The Key He Never Explained
It was a key. Small, old, brass. Not a door key — the stubby kind that opens a strongbox or a safe-deposit drawer.
I stood in my kitchen with broken plate around my feet and that key in my palm, and Maddie staring at me like I'd turned into someone she didn't know.
The last time I'd seen it, my father was sliding it into his shirt pocket in the backyard, the same night Diane went out for air and never walked back in. I was sixteen. I hadn't thought about it in forty years. And now here it was, warm from my granddaughter's body.
I called Karen — my daughter, Maddie's mom — and told her I needed to keep Maddie for the evening. Then I got in the car.
Dad was by the window in the common room when I came in, a blanket over his knees even though the heat was cranked up. The second he saw my face, something moved behind his eyes.
I didn't say hello. I held up the key.
The blood just drained out of his face.
"Where did you get that," he said. Not a question. A whisper.
"Out of Diane's sweater. The one the custodian at Maddie's school handed her today."
He turned his head and stared out the window at the parking lot.
"Dad. Look at me."
Nothing.
"Is my sister alive?"
His fingers tightened on the arms of the chair until the knuckles went white. His jaw worked back and forth.
"You need to leave this where it is," he said finally.
"She was my twin."
He shut his eyes.
"Does this key open something, Dad? What did you have locked up?"
He didn't answer me. But one tear slid down the side of his nose and dropped off his chin, and he didn't wipe it away.
That was all the answer I needed.
He knew something. He'd known something for forty years.
I drove home with the key clenched in my fist. When I went to hang up Maddie's backpack, a folded piece of paper fell out of the front pocket — paper that had not been in there when I packed her lunch that morning.
May you like
Four words, in blue pen.
*Don't show your father.*
