CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT #3
Rachel closed the lid of the box gently and looked up at Eve. "I'd like to take this with me, if you're willing to let me."
Eve's eyes went to the box, then to Rachel, something wary creeping back into her expression. "Take it where? And…why?"
"I'm with the FBI." Rachel kept her voice even, though she felt a sting of guilt. "I know I didn't lead with that on the phone, and I'm sorry for that. I wanted to see if you knew anything about the key first. I…God, I hope you know there was no way I could have expected this."
Eve's hand came up to her collarbone, pressing flat against it like she needed something to hold onto. "Did Eleanor know you were an agent?”
“She did.”
Eve grinned and said, “That clever girl. I hope…you know, you don’t have to look into this just because she so cleverly set this up.”
“No, I want to. I want to have a look at it.
That's all I can promise you right now, though.
" Rachel reached across the table, not quite touching her, just closing some of the distance.
"I'm not going to pretend I know what I'll find. But your sister kept this for a reason, Eve. And I feel like I knew her well enough to think it might be a good reason.”
Eve didn't answer right away. She reached out instead and rested two fingers on the lid of the box, the same careful, reverent touch she'd used setting it on the table. For a moment, Rachel thought she might change her mind entirely, might decide the closet was where it belonged after all.
"She used to get quiet around the anniversary," Eve said finally, so softly Rachel almost missed it.
"Every year, right around this time. I asked her about it once, years ago, and she told me some things don't get better with time, they just get further away.
" Her fingers curled off the lid, and she sat back, some of the fight going out of her shoulders all at once. "Take it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am. If she trusted you enough to hand you a key on her way out of this world, I suppose I can trust you with the rest of it."
"Thank you." Rachel drew the box toward herself, and the movement felt heavier than a small tin box had any right to.
She looked to Paige and saw a stern, confident look on her face.
She understood the heaviness of this moment just as well as the older women.
"I'll take care of it. And I'll let you know what I find, whatever that turns out to be. "
Eve nodded, but her eyes had welled, and she pressed the back of her hand briefly beneath one of them before any tears could fall.
"She was the only family I had left that remembered any of it the way I did.
Mama, Daddy, that farm. Now it's just me carrying it.
" She looked at Rachel, something almost pleading underneath the words.
"I'd like to know. Whatever it is. I'd rather know than keep wondering for the rest of whatever years I've got. "
"I understand." Rachel reached out again, and this time she let her hand rest over Eve's on the table, brief but deliberate. "I promise you'll hear from me."
Eve walked them to the door herself, refusing help she didn't seem to need, and stood on the porch with her cardigan pulled tight around her even though the afternoon was warm. "Thank you for coming to me first," she said. "Instead of just showing up with a warrant or whatever it is you people do."
"You're not a suspect in anything, Eve,” Rachel said with a laugh. “You're just someone who loved your sister…a sister that I consider a good friend." Rachel held the box carefully against her side.
Eve's mouth trembled into something that wasn't quite a smile, but wanted to be. "Eleanor liked you. She told me that, more than once. Said you actually listened when she talked, which she said was rarer than people think."
Rachel felt something catch in her throat that she hadn't expected, and she nodded rather than trust her voice with an answer. Paige, quiet through all of it, said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
Eve gave Paige a clumsy little hug and said, “Of course, dear.”
They walked back to the car in silence, the box settled carefully on the seat between them, and Rachel didn't start the engine right away.
It wasn't until they were back in the car, the lockbox resting on the seat between them, that Rachel let herself fully observe the thought that had come to her while standing in the kitchen.
A woman planning to forget didn't build a timeline.
She didn't collect a police report decades after the fact, and she didn't organize dates and names into what was essentially a case file.
Whatever Eleanor believed had happened to their father, she hadn't believed the word accidental for a single day of her life.
And the key, Rachel thought, pulling out of the driveway with Paige watching the house shrink in the side mirror. Well, the key hadn't been meant for just anyone. Eleanor had wanted it to find its way to someone who might actually do something with what was inside that box.
And if that’s what her friend had wanted her to do as a last wish, Rachel fully intended to get it done.