Chapter 2
Noah fell asleep before the doctor finished warming his feet.
I stayed beside him until his breathing evened out.
Then I went downstairs.
Mark and Claudia were waiting in the lodge library with four Bellacorte guards at the doors. My birthday dinner had been quietly ended. Guests were told there had been a family emergency.
That part was true.
I placed the brass key on the table.
Neither of them looked at it.
So I placed the strip of paper beside it.
ASK ABOUT ELLEN.
Claudia finally spoke.
“We don’t know what that means.”
I looked at Mark.
He had always been a poor liar when he was afraid.
“Try again.”
Mark exhaled. “Noah found the airplane in storage.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“He shouldn’t have had it.”
“Why?”
“It belonged to Mom.”
That stopped me.
I picked up the airplane again.
My wife Ellen used to build small wooden toys when Mark was young. Boats. Cars. One ridiculous little train that fell apart every time someone touched it.
But I had never seen this plane.
“She made this?”
Mark nodded reluctantly.
“For who?”
He said nothing.
Claudia answered.
“For Mark.”
I looked at my son.
The crooked wing suddenly made sense.
Ellen had made this for him when he was a boy.
So why had Noah found it hidden in storage thirty years later?
I turned the key over in my hand.
Small.
Old.
A number stamped along the shaft.
“What does it open?”
Mark looked at Claudia.
That glance again.
Too fast.
Too practiced.
I leaned back.
“You both knew the key was inside.”
Claudia shook her head.
“Noah opened the plane last week,” I said. “Didn’t he?”
Silence.
Then Mark said, “He was playing where he shouldn’t.”
“And found something you wanted hidden.”
“He found family junk.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
My voice stayed quiet.
“He found something connected to his grandmother, and you threw him outside because he tried to give it to me.”
Mark’s jaw tightened.
Then Claudia made the mistake.
She said, “Ellen should have destroyed that thing years ago.”
I stared at her.
She froze.
Mark closed his eyes.
May you like
And just like that, I knew Claudia had never merely seen the airplane.
She knew what Ellen put inside it.
