Chapter 4 - THE KEY IN THE ROSARY
Rhett drove back to the mansion with Clara and Lena beside him.
No one spoke much.
Lena kept the rosary wrapped around her fingers.
She remembered seeing it on the kitchen counter when she was little.
At hospital waiting rooms.
At parent-teacher conferences.
During thunderstorms.
She had always believed it was simply something her mother held when she was afraid.
Now she understood.
It had been holding a secret.
Rhett led them upstairs.
His mother’s bedroom had remained mostly unchanged since Eleanor Moretti died eight years earlier.
Cream curtains.
A dressing table.
A cedar cabinet near the windows.
Clara stopped at the doorway.
“I haven’t been inside since the funeral.”
Rhett glanced at her.
“You cleaned every room in this house.”
“Not this one.”
He understood.
After Eleanor died, Clara had protected the room by staying away from it.
They crossed to the cabinet.
The brass key fit the smallest drawer.
Rhett turned it.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Clara frowned.
“It should open.”
Lena examined the key.
“There’s another number.”
Tiny marks had been scratched near the top.
Rhett stared.
Then he looked toward the hallway.
“What?”
Lena asked.
“My mother had seventeen cedar storage boxes.”
They went to a dressing closet.
Rhett pulled several old boxes from the upper shelves.
Seven.
Twelve.
Seventeen.
Clara’s hand shook as Lena inserted the key.
The lid opened.
Inside rested a blue wool coat.
A child’s drawing.
And a silver watch.
Lena stopped breathing.
She knew the watch.
Not from memory exactly.
From feeling.
Her father sitting on the edge of her bed.
Her little fingers tracing the round silver case.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“Dad’s.”
Clara nodded.
“I thought Boyd had it.”
“He had a copy.”
Rhett looked at her.
“A copy of a watch?”
“Thomas bought two identical watches for a reason.”
Clara picked it up.
“He gave one to Boyd.”
Lena stared.
“They were friends?”
“More than friends. Business partners.”
Another truth.
Another piece of her childhood rearranged.
Before Clara married Boyd, he had been Thomas’s friend.
The man who came to the funeral.
The man who fixed their leaking sink afterward.
The man who gradually became indispensable.
“You married Dad’s business partner.”
“I married the person who kept showing up after your father was gone.”
Lena swallowed.
“And when did he start hurting you?”
Clara looked away.
“Not at first.”
That answer somehow made everything sadder.
Rhett opened the watch.
An inscription appeared inside.
T.W. — BUILD IT RIGHT.
Beneath the inscription was a second plate.
Rhett pressed the edge.
It opened.
Inside lay a tiny folded strip of paper.
Three numbers.
Lena frowned.
“A code?”
Clara shook her head.
“I never knew.”
Rhett did.
“Properties.”
He went to the cabinet and pulled out an old neighborhood map.
2147 Ashland.
17 Loomis.
36 Carpenter.
Three buildings.
Thomas had not owned part of one property.
He had owned interests in three.
Rhett found the old partnership files.
Thomas Wells had invested labor and capital into all three projects.
If the records were genuine, his share had grown substantially before his death.
“How much?” Lena asked.
Rhett hesitated.
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Several million dollars.”
Clara closed her eyes.
Lena stared at her.
“Several million.”
“I never knew it became that much.”
“You knew enough.”
“Yes.”
The anger returned.
“You let me believe Dad left us nothing.”
“I thought money would make Boyd more dangerous.”
“So you stayed with him?”
“I thought if he believed there was nothing left to find, he would stop looking.”
“He didn’t.”
“No.”
Clara’s voice cracked.
“He just started looking for other things to control.”
Rhett unfolded the child’s drawing from the box.
A little girl had drawn three stick figures.
MOM.
ME.
MR. R.
Lena stared.
“Mr. R?”
Rhett looked almost embarrassed.
“I think that’s me.”
She remembered then.
A teenage boy in a kitchen.
Hot chocolate.
A white ceramic mug.
She had been seven.
“You were here.”
“Once,” Clara whispered. “Eleanor let me bring you when the babysitter canceled.”
Rhett remembered more slowly.
“You spilled cocoa on my school blazer.”
Despite everything, Lena almost laughed.
“I was seven.”
“It was a terrible blazer.”
The tiny warmth disappeared when Clara lifted the blue coat from the box.
Something inside the lining crinkled.
She froze.
“What?”
Rhett asked.
Clara turned the coat over.
Her fingers found a seam near the bottom.
“This wasn’t here before.”
She pulled at the thread.
A folded ledger page slid out.
Rhett opened it.
There were payment entries from the year Thomas died.
Construction accounts.
Emergency expenses.
One line had been circled in red.
B.C. — COLLISION CLEANUP.
$75,000.
Lena looked at Clara.
“Boyd.”
Clara nodded slowly.
“Maybe.”
Below it was another notation.
V.M. AUTHORIZED.
Vincent Moretti.
Rhett’s father.
Rhett read the page twice.
His face lost all color.
“My father paid Boyd seventy-five thousand dollars after Thomas died.”
Clara took the page.
“There’s more.”
A handwritten note ran along the bottom.
BOYD WARNED THEM ABOUT THE BRAKES.
THEY USED THE TRUCK ANYWAY.
Lena felt cold.
“Who wrote that?”
Clara stared at the handwriting.
Then at Rhett.
“Your mother.”
Rhett sat down.
For the first time since Lena had met him, the feared Rhett Moretti looked shaken.
Lena thought the worst truth was that Boyd might have killed her father.
Instead, Eleanor’s note suggested something else.
Boyd had warned them.
Someone had ignored him.
Lena touched the silver watch.
“Then Boyd didn’t cause the accident.”
Clara’s face tightened.
“I didn’t say that.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Clara looked at her daughter.
“Boyd didn’t cause the crash.”
May you like
A long pause.
“But he helped your father hide what happened afterward.”
