Chapter 8 - Patricia Opens the Box
Patricia spent the night in the small room above Frank's garage. She had not wanted to return to the house, but she had not wanted to remain at the hotel either. Every familiar place now contained a trapdoor.
Daniel waited outside in his car until morning. He did not pressure her to call him Dad. He only brought coffee and a paper bag containing two blueberry muffins.
"I remembered you liked them," he said.
Patricia accepted the bag. "You do not know what I like."
"I know what you liked when you were six. I have been trying to meet you in my memory."
She looked through the garage window toward the kitchen. Frank was speaking with Michael, their voices low. Sarah was sorting bank records on the dining table. Thomas and Lena had gone to the courthouse.
"Everyone has a version of me," Patricia said. "My mother had the frightened version. Eleanor had the child who needed saving. Michael had the wife he thought he knew."
"What version do you want?" Daniel asked.
"I do not know yet."
Gloria called at ten. Patricia nearly ignored it, but something in her wanted to hear the machinery of the lie while she still had the strength to resist it.
"Where are you?" Gloria demanded.
"With Dad."
Silence.
"You have no right to call him that."
"You said he was dead."
"He might as well have been. He left us."
"You kept his letters."
"I was protecting you."
"From knowing that my father loved me?"
Gloria's voice lowered. "Your father is using you to get money from Frank. Rebecca warned me this would happen."
Patricia closed her eyes. Even now, Gloria reached for the same lever: fear first, then accusation, then the promise that only Gloria could make sense of the world.
"What is Rebecca to you?" Patricia asked.
"A friend."
"Why is her company buying Frank's house?"
"Because he cannot afford to keep it."
"Why did Eleanor write that you were stealing from a scholarship fund?"
Gloria hung up.
Patricia saved the call and joined the others. She placed her mother's old key ring on the table. The lighthouse charm was still attached, but the small key inside it was missing.
"There was a key here," she said. "I remember Gloria telling me it opened the blue door."
"She may have taken it," Thomas said when he returned.
"Or she may have hidden it where I would find it," Patricia replied. "She likes an audience."
They searched Gloria's hotel room with a warrant Lena had helped obtain after the threatening message. The room held no ledger, but a false bottom in Gloria's suitcase contained photographs, account numbers, and a bundle of letters tied with green thread.
The letters were from Daniel. Some had never been mailed. Others had been opened and resealed. Patricia recognized her own name in his handwriting.
Dear Patricia, one began, I am sorry I missed your school play. I was standing outside the theater, but your mother told me you were ashamed of me.
Another read, Eleanor says you have her kindness. I hope that is true, because kindness should never mean allowing someone to hurt you.
Patricia began to cry silently.
Michael stood beside her. "You do not have to read all of them tonight."
"I have waited my entire life to read them."
In the back of the suitcase, they found a receipt from a private storage facility. The locker had been rented under Patricia's name eight years earlier, but Patricia had never seen it.
Inside locker 88 sat a cardboard box filled with Eleanor's correspondence. The first letter was addressed to Gloria and dated three months before Eleanor's death.
I will not give you another dollar. I will not let you rewrite Patricia's childhood. If you come to my house again, I will tell Frank everything, including what happened at the Harbor Light.
The next letter had been torn in half. Only one sentence remained: You were not alone in the records room, and neither was I.
Thomas found a small digital recorder beneath the box. Its battery was dead, but a repair shop restored the file. The audio began with Eleanor's voice, then Gloria's, then a third person whose identity could not be heard over the hum of machinery.
"You promised the tunnel would be sealed," Eleanor said.
"I promised nothing," Gloria answered.
"Rebecca promised it for you."
"Rebecca does what has to be done."
The third voice said, "And if Patricia learns who signed the transfer?"
The recording ended.
Patricia looked at Michael. "That voice was mine."
No one spoke.
"I was eighteen," she said. "Gloria made me sign something at the Harbor Light. She said it was a volunteer form."
Thomas checked the date on the file. "It was a power of attorney."
May you like
Patricia's knees weakened. Michael caught her before she fell.
For the first time since the cake disappeared, she let herself lean against him. He held her carefully, not as if she were forgiven, but as if she were real.
