Chapter 2 - THE SECRETS WE KEEPSix months earlier, I had not known that a door could become the most frightening thing in the world. Back then, I thought doors were just doors. And I still thought mothers always loved their children.
It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon when I first found it. My father had passed away a year prior—a sudden, tragic heart attack, or so the doctors said. His belongings had been unceremoniously boxed up and shoved into the attic by my mother, who seemed more annoyed by his death than grieved by it. But she had missed one box. A small, dusty carton shoved beneath the guest room bed.
I was playing hide-and-seek with Jessica. She was the seeker, though I knew she would abandon the game after five minutes to go watch television, leaving me hidden for hours. I had crawled under the bed and bumped my head against the cardboard. Inside was one of my father’s old leather work boots.
I don't know why I reached inside it. Maybe I just wanted to feel close to him again. But my fingers brushed against something hard and uneven tucked beneath the leather insole. I pried the insole up.
Underneath lay a heavy, jagged iron key and a small, folded piece of parchment.
I unfolded the paper. It was a letter, written in my father’s frantic, messy scrawl.
If something happens to me, it wasn’t my heart. She’s been slipping something into my coffee. I found the empty vials in her vanity. The key opens the safety deposit box at First National. The life insurance policy is a forgery. Keep this safe.
I was only seven. I didn't know what "vials" or "forgery" meant. But I understood the words: She’s been slipping something into my coffee.
My mother.
I had barely folded the paper back into the boot when the bedroom door creaked open. High heels clicked against the hardwood. My mother.
"What are you doing under there?" her voice was sharp, slicing through the quiet room like a razor.
I scrambled out, kicking the boot back under the bed frame, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Nothing, Mommy. Playing."
Her eyes, cold and calculating, swept over the dust on my knees, then darted to the shadow beneath the bed. She didn't say anything, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. She knew I had found something. She just didn't know what.
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Over the next six months, the house changed. The air grew thick with a silent, suffocating tension. My mother watched me. Jessica bullied me more aggressively, encouraged by our mother’s approving smirks. I became a prisoner in my own home, holding onto a secret I barely understood, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And now, with the smoke burning my lungs, I realized the shoe hadn't just dropped. It had kicked the door shut and locked me inside to die.
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