I shook my head. “I don’t care what he’s done in the past. What’s done is done, and I’m sure there are things he regrets. But it doesn’t change the way I feel about him now. I love him and I would do anything for him.”
She stared at me long and hard. “So you’re in love with him. You would do anything for him. Does that include keeping his secrets?”
“Yes.”
“I bet if you knew, if you only knew, you’d hate him. You’d wish you never met him. You may even wish him dead.”
I frowned, not understanding what she was trying to tell me. “What are you talking about?”
“Everyone has skeletons, Rosslyn. Some worse than others. You just have to know where to look.”
She came toward me and I felt a rush of fear. But she walked past me and I turned, not trusting my back to her. Pulling on the corner of a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, she revealed a safe tucked secretly behind it.
She didn’t make a move to open it as she turned and walked back toward the door to leave the room. I didn’t know what she expected me to do without the combination.
And then she began calling out numbers. “021201. If you want to know more about Sebastian, the things you have the right to know, then open the safe.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond as she walked from the room. I turned back to look at the safe and I felt nervous. My hands began to sweat and my heart was racing.
I rubbed my palms on my pants as I tried to tell myself there was nothing in that safe I needed to know about. But even as I told myself that, I was repeating the number Vick said back in my head over and over again. 021201, 021201, 021201.
I could have left it alone and told Sebastian everything Vick said when he returned. I could have asked him what was in the safe, but I had the feeling he wouldn’t tell me. I also had a feeling that whatever was in the safe would be long gone if I ever asked about it.
Taking a deep breath, I took a slow step toward the wall, and then another until I was close enough to enter the code. When I reached toward the buttons, my fingers shook. I ignored the trembling and placed my finger over the first number.
The safe made a sound that sounded louder than it actually was, and popped open. My head whipped toward the door, but it remained empty. My racing heart pounded in my ears as I pulled open the heavy door.
There was nothing out of the ordinary at first sight and I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but I was glad it wasn’t any body parts. I shifted through the papers, they looked like old newspaper clippings, and a few stacks of money.
Then, I felt a small hand gun. It scared me at first and I snatched my hand back like it was a venomous snake. I scolded myself for acting like a scared idiot, and moved my fingers over the gun. It didn’t look dangerous, but that didn’t matter. It was older—not at all like something I pictured Sebastian using, but I figured it had sentimental value.
Next to the gun was a medium-sized, black box. I pulled it from the safe, opening the lid. There were pictures of Sebastian and Vick when they were younger, an old match box, and tiny trinkets that I’m sure meant something to Sebastian, but didn’t stand out to me at all.
Shifting through the pictures, I smiled at each one. My eyes landed on the next item and all the happiness was sucked out of me. Lifting it, I looked down at the locket in the palm of my hand. It looked just like…but that was impossible. My mother’s locket was stolen that night.
The chain was broken and slipped through the tiny clasp of the locket, making a tiny clinking noise when it hit the floor. Pressing on the side of the locket, it popped open and my heart shattered into a million pieces. My eyes took in the tiny picture of the infant I knew was Kyle before landing on my picture. I was nine in the picture and I was the happiest person in the world.
My tears blurred the picture, making the locket look as if it was floating in my palm. I was having a nightmare. No way was this happening. I was still sleeping and I needed to wake up.
I closed my eyes and tried to envision the boy from that night—the way he stood, the way he held his shoulders straight, and his walk… it all felt so familiar to me now.
Closing the locket, I clutched it tightly in my fist, the latch on the side digging into my palm. And then I remembered the gun.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe as the realization of what that gun was, what it was used for, came to me. The truth of it was choking me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
The newspaper clippings covered the gun, and I reached for them. A tear fell down my cheeks as I shifted through them, reading story after story about the death of my parents. The date caught my attention, February 12, 2001... 021201. Sebastian’s safe code was the date my parents were killed.