Chapter 15
Growing up, my parents owned a house a few minutes outside of town, where the property was surrounded by cattle farms. Lawrence and I would spend days stirring up trouble in the fields.
Occasionally, after school, I’d bike to the convenience store, grab some ice cream and watch the world go by.
A world that was brimming with hopes and dreams.
Like anything was possible.
How wrong I was.
Now, as I drove through town on my hard-won good graces of the FBI, I saw only the pain of my past.
How foolish I had been to think life was simple and full of hope. That good people got what they deserved, and the bad were always punished.
Over the last ten years, I found excuses to visit as little as possible. It was only when Lawrence pulled out the ‘brotherly obligation card’ that I allowed him to drag me back. And even then, I did it with ample eye-rolling.
Despite this, I didn’t think returning to Eureka would stir much of an emotional response. I was a grownup who had seen more than my fair share of misery and suffering. Surely, I should have outgrown the discomfort of my memories.
But it was hard to ignore the tightness in my chest, feeling and reliving each and every one of the ghosts of my past.
Okay, maybe I had been avoiding returning to Eureka, because, now, I could feel the painful memories etched into the pavement.
The three boys I’d fallen for in my youth, and the tragedies that befell them.
My stabbing. My parents getting sucked into that godforsaken cult.
The foreclosure of the house. Lawrence and I having to fend for ourselves, with nothing saved up, all of it used for my surgeries post-stabbing.
White-knuckling the steering wheel, I swallowed the jagged little lump in my throat, and forced myself past all the places that made me want to forget. The sidewalk where I was stabbed. The family home, now derelict and abandoned. The nursing home—
Damn, I really didn’t want to go in there. But it was a necessary discomfort if I wanted anything I said to be believable.
And that was hard. So much harder than I imagined.
Even though I spent the morning preparing myself for the rendezvous with Mads, eating enough candy to keep the local convenience store in business, being back in the town where I was raised took an emotional toll. Everything I did felt weighted. Everything took more effort.
Scoping out the location and all possible escape routes should have taken twenty-minutes, tops, but more than once I caught my thoughts drifting, so I’d started all over again. I had to re-do it three, four, times to make sure I got it right.
And I was running out of time.
Lawrence’s note had been very specific: FOUR TWO ONE / GRIFFIN HOME.
The first part was easy. Four hundred and twenty-one was the street number. It was the Griffin Home line that held meaning only for me.
As kids, while our parents did their grocery shopping, Lawrence and I would be given free rein to roam about town, so long as it was within a three-block radius of the grocery store.
We’d be given five dollars, which was usually spent on treats that immediately gave us a sugar high.
And more often than not, Lawrence and I would turn whatever it was we were doing into a competition. Racing was common.
Once Lawrence suggested that we race to the Greenwood Hotel—just about the only landmark within our grocery store radius—but with a mouthful of taffy I’d heard him say, “Griffin Home”.
Lawrence being Lawrence, he thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, and ever since then we’d referred to the hotel as the Griffin Home.
Only the Griffin Home wasn’t located at a street address of four hundred and twenty-one. And the Griffin Home wasn’t a bank.
There were, however, five banks on the same road as the Griffin Home, but there was only one with an address which corresponded with the numbers from Lawrence’s letter.
It was there that I would meet Mads.
Well, technically, I told him to meet me in a parking lot a block away so he wouldn’t know our final destination before I took him there. The last thing I needed was for Mads to go to the bank without me.
After all, he did have the key to the safety deposit box, and a keen interest in taking his share.
Half.
?
“I’ve gotta say, summer agrees with you, Delilah.” Mads approached, hands in his pockets. “All that sweat is giving you a glow.”
I was sitting in the trunk of my rental car, feet dangling, when he finally decided to show up. “You’re late.” I popped to my feet and shut the trunk.
“You’re gonna give me shit for being,” he checked the time, “thirty minutes late after a twenty-hour drive?”
“Come on, we don’t want to keep the bank waiting.” I led the way, not once mentioning that we were, in fact, going to arrive five minutes early. When I booked the appointment, I’d accounted for the fact that a cross-country drive would have delays, but I wasn’t going to tell Mads that.
Entering the bank, we were hit by a blast of cold air. The sweat that accrued during our walk solidified in a cold, icy, sheet against my back.
My least favorite part about summer—wearing next to nothing to battle the heat, then being frozen to death when entering a building. And my least favorite part of the day was dealing with Mads. Which was saying something given how unpleasant my morning had been.
Our steps echoed as we crossed the floor to the only staffed teller booth. With only two people who appeared to be working, a teller and a dozing security guard, it all felt rather empty.
“So, this is it, huh?” Mads surveyed our surroundings. “A bank in the middle of nowhere. Never would have found this on my own.”
No duh. “You brought the key?”
He held it up with a flourish.
My response was a nod as we reached the teller, an older woman with a hearing aid poking out beneath her powder-white hair.
“Hello, hi there, we have an appointment.” I waited to make sure I had the woman’s attention before making my ask. The teller took a moment to look up. Her eyes magnified by her thick-lensed glasses, she blinked twice. “We’re here to visit a safety deposit box.”
“Yes, yes, you’re the one that called.” She pulled out a bundle of notes that looked like chicken scratch, and pointed to a particularly jagged set of lines. “The box of Lawrence James. You’re his sister?”
It had been a while, but I used to get that a lot. I pulled out my ID. “Delilah James.”
“Hm.” The old woman clucked to herself as she confirmed my ID with whatever was written in her form. “Resemblance doesn’t run in the family. Adopted, was he?”
Except when we were with our parents, people had always assumed that he was adopted, not me. I had almost forgotten how biased and disconnected people in smaller towns could be. “Nope.” She wasn’t going to get more than that.
“Hm.” She clucked again, eyes darting between me and Mads. “I’ll call Marlon for you.” I thought she was going to pick up the phone and dial the man, but instead she took a deep breath and shouted, “MARLON!”
I swear the sound reverberated off the plexiglass partition, and left a thrumming in my eardrums.
“Jesus Christ, woman!” Mads blinked back and stuck a finger in his ear, as I fought back a laugh at the absurdity of it. “You’ve gotta warn someone before you do that.”
The teller paid no attention to Mads, as a wisp of a man appeared from around the corner. Even though he must have been at least seventy he looked downright youthful next to the woman at the teller booth.
Marlon bounded over to Mads and me with a large smile on his face, which as far as I could tell was genuine. “Hello, hello! Sorry to keep you waiting.”
The teller held up her note and tapped at the illegible chicken scratch. “Ms. Delilah James and guest for safety deposit box number 128.”
Marlon clasped his hands at his waist. “Ah yes, the big dark fellow. Such a lovely man.” He got one pass on that. One. “This way if you please.” Then he shot like a dart down the hallway.
Boy, did the man walk fast. Like he drank twelve cups of coffee, fast. It felt like Mads and I were chasing him down the bank’s corridors and into the vault.
Marlon came to an abrupt stop as he input a code on an alarm. “You know when the dark fellow first came in, he really made an impression.”
And…. he said it again.
“His name was Lawrence, not the dark fellow.” Not something I’d think would need to be said in today’s day and age but… alas.
“My apologies, of course, my language needs some tuning. But what I wanted to say, was that Lawrence—” Marlon paused.
“I’m sorry did you say was?” The man didn’t give me time to respond before he clasped his hands together and wrung them.
“Oh, my dears, I am so sorry for your loss. You know the first time I met him he came to open this here box and—”
“Can we get on with it?” Mads rubbed his fingers repetitively over his sandy brow.
“—Someone collapsed.” Marlon snapped his fingers.
“And just like that he knew what to do. Even the paramedics said he did a bang-up job. And when it was all over, he didn’t expect anything, no, he just went on with opening his box.
And I remember thinking, you know, it’s true what they say, not all heroes wear capes. ”
Well, after his ventures with calling Lawrence ‘the dark fellow’, this conversation was going a lot better than I expected. Marlon had gone out of his way to remember Lawrence as the person he was, making a difference, and that made me smile.
“That was really touching. He was a good guy, but Delilah and I have business that involves this key.” Mads held it up. “Unlocking that box.”
Marlon held my gaze, paying no attention to Mads. I got the sense he was hanging around, sharing stories, because he thought I was being coerced. And while that was true, to a point, I could handle myself. I made my bed, and I was prepared to lie in it.