This is when I happen to glance down and see it.
The corner of the black box overlaps the opening of the closet door by less than an inch and is easy to overlook unless you happen to be staring straight at it. It’s small, less than a foot wide and perhaps five inches tall, and has been nestled against a short section of wall between the door and the interior corner.
The tiny safe isn’t heavy. I can pick it up with one hand. It’s also locked and nothing on the keypad gives any hint what the combination might be.
“Trentcassini is home!” the girls yell because they have heard his key in the door before I have.
Seconds later I hear him scaling the stairs and the girls cheer the return of their uncle. Yes, Trent is their uncle even if they have no idea and I’m unsure when or how we will explain it to them.
He finds me sitting on the floor of my sister’s room.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” I hand him the safe and he helps me up off the floor with his free hand.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know. It was in her closet.”
“Can we make our mini pizzas soon?” The girls stand in the doorway, all smiles and innocence.
Trent and I exchange a glance. Whatever is in the safe will have to wait until later. He sets it down carefully atop Jules’s desk and turns to the girls with a grin.
“You bet we can. I bought all kinds of toppings if you want to try something new. I got pepperoni. I got mushrooms. I got pineapple.”
“Pineapple?” Caitlin makes a face. “That’s not for pizza.”
“Give it a try.” Trent pats the top of her head. “And for dessert we can toast marshmallows on the backyard grill.”
“I want my marshmallow to be crispy,” says Mara.
“We can arrange that.”
She grabs his hand. “No, I mean like really crispy.”
He winks. “I promise we will succeed.”
With Trent here, I’m able to put on a better show of optimism. We assemble our mini pizzas and I turn on the oven light so the girls can watch the cheese melt and bubble. Caitlin decides that pineapple slices are a genius addition to pizza.
After dinner, Trent fires up the grill and helps the girls find long sticks to toast their marshmallows. Caitlin’s first marshmallow attempt falls off her stick and is irretrievable. Trent gives her his.
There is pizza sauce on their shirts and their chins are smeared with sticky marshmallow guts but they are happy. They allow me bathe them and put them to bed without a fuss and Trent stops in their rooms to wish them sweet dreams, as has become his routine. I watch him as his eyes linger on each of them for a little longer tonight, now that his connection to them is deeper than he’d ever guessed. The love in his eyes is unmistakable. This observation makes me love him even more.
Trent doesn’t need to tell me that he feels the same way I feel. He’d lie down in traffic and sacrifice himself to keep the girls safe.
He tucks Mara’s quilt around her and scratches the ears of her stuffed dog when she asks him to. The window blinds in her room are partially open and I reach for the lever to close them, catching a glimpse of the ascendant full moon.
“Our past and our future.
Kissed by the moon.
Fate undivided.
Whatever will be.”
I drop my hand from the window.
I feel Trent watching me as I cross the room in haste and gallop down the stairs in search of the handbag I’d thrown on the couch earlier. More than a month has passed since the day we drove to the prison to visit my father. Trent laughed out loud over the lyrics of Abigail Fisher’s signature song when I played it for him. Her CD is still in my purse.
The case is popped open and Abigail’s perfect handwriting stares back at me from the note she wrote years ago.
Her note is not what interests me right now.
What I came to see is on the other side in my sister’s handwriting. Three numbers in a column.
12
6
23
Those numbers meant nothing to me at a casual glance.
But Danny’s birthday is May 12.
My birthday is August 6.
Jules’s birthday is March 23.
There’s a safe in Jules’s closet and Jules had a secret.
She left this on her dresser amid her precious treasures.
It can’t be a coincidence.
Trent is waiting at the top of the stairs when I run back up.
“Come on.” I pull him into Jules’s room.
With my first try the safe remains stubbornly closed and I sigh with frustration.
Trent peers over my shoulder. “Touch the buttons one at a time, Gretch. Instead of pressing the number twelve at once, press one, then two, and so on.”
He’s right. The instant my finger leaves the last digit, there’s a tiny ding and the flap flies open. I have no idea what to expect inside. What I find is only one tiny object.
A single USB flash drive.
I hold it in the palm of my hand, my heart pounding. “There’s no USB port on my laptop.”
He nods. “There’s one on mine. I’ll be right back.”
Trent is very fast. Within two minutes he dashes down the street and back again.
I meet him in the front yard and wordlessly we go to my room and shut the door.
I’m unable to sit still while Trent powers up his laptop and inserts the flash drive. He stares at the screen.
“What is it?” I scramble to his side on the bed.
He points. “One file. It’s a big one. A video.”
I swallow hard. Breathe deeply.
“Play it,” I tell him.
15
Jules
“Hello. It’s me, Julianne Aaronson, but I know that because this is my phone and I’m the one recording. Haha. Sorry, that sounds weird. I’m nervous. It’s June thirteenth. I’m at Cassini Brewery and I wasn’t planning to come here but it looks like there’s a party and I see his car. I need to talk to him. I’ve left him voicemails but he never calls back. I’ve gone to his house but his fiancé was there and I chickened out. So here I am. Twelve weeks pregnant. I’m going to tell the father whether he wants to hear it or not. You’re coming along for the ride so buckle up.”
My hands shake as I lower the phone after making sure it will continue to record.
He won’t think it’s odd that I’m carrying a phone. People are always carrying their phones in plain sight. Phones are like arms now for crying out loud.
I’m still wearing my pink work scrubs after a long day at the clinic but that can’t be helped. I’m not going home to change.
The lights are blazing at Cassini Brewery and there must be thirty cars in the parking lot. The last time I was here, the only time I’ve ever been here, was a night when the bar was open to the public but tonight it isn’t. Tonight the brewery is closed for a private party. However, I can see Liam’s red Porsche and I owe him the truth, no matter how inconvenient it might be.
Three men are standing outside by the entrance. They all share the same look of arrogant good fortune. My father would assume they are summer people but he assumes that about everyone he doesn’t like. At least he doesn’t need to worry about summer people in prison.