Chapter 117

• I never liked the smell of safes. It wasn’t the iron, though the faint smell of metal always lingered, nor was it the dust. It was the way the air filled heavy inside them, sealed for years, carrying with it memories no one had wanted to touch.
• When the paramedics left, their stretcher wheels echoing down the hallway, I found myself back in my Father’s study, the space filled with silence. My fingers trailed over the mahogany desk as if I could steady myself on its familiar surface.
• Jadeline wasn’t home. I had called her, voice clipped, telling her about Father. She had sighed like it was nothing, promised she’d “Will head straight to the hospital when I'm done here .” Typical. But her absence left me free, and something inside me, call it instinct, call it suspicion, pulled me toward the safe again.