“Hell yeah.”
I don’t know how much time passes while I look through Kenji’s comics and he tells me about the world he’s built before Dani taps me on the shoulder.
“You okay?” she asks me while smiling at Kenji.
“I’m great.” I look back to Kenji. “Kenji, do you mind if my friend Dani sits with us?”
He looks her up and down with mild disinterest before going back to his sketching. “I guess.”
“Thank you for letting me in your space.” Dani looks like she’s won the lottery as she slides into the seat across from Kenji. She lets him set the pace, staying quiet while he feverishly adds to his drawings. His sister runs over to Dani for help tying her shoe, and when she leaves, Dani gushes about how sweet she is. Kenji doesn’t speak up to say that’s his sister. He doesn’t even give an indication that he heard us, he just rips out a piece of paper from his sketchbook and passes it over to Dani with a pack of colored pencils.
Dani doesn’t understand this sudden inclusion, but she can barely contain her excitement. When she shows him the dog she attempted to draw, he silently takes his pencil to it and makes some adjustments for her. How did I get bumped from the best buddy category already?
That’s the power of Dani Jenkins.
Kenji shares the next panel of his comic with me as Dani gets up to find some construction paper. When she comes back, the volunteer who told me about Kenji walks over to us.
“I’m sorry I got caught up. Did you need help with anything else?” I ask.
“Oh no, we’re fine. I actually came over because I noticed your key,” she says to Dani. The key we dug out of Janine’s yard has been hanging from her belt loop since we found it.
“What about it?”
“I’ve seen that symbol before. Come with me.” She leads us to the back office, where there’s a small safe that has the same strange owl symbol as the key.
“Oh shit,” Dani exclaims.
“Do you know what the symbol is for?” I ask.
“Honestly? I don’t think it stands for anything. This safe has been here since I started and only one random guy has ever come and opened it.”
Of course.
Dani sticks the key in the safe and turns.
Inside the safe there’s a broken watch, forever frozen on the time 12:05. Next to the watch is one of Tanya’s notes that says,“A broken clock is right twice a day.”
“Tanya said she would always remember the exact time her heart stopped beating,” Dani says in a hushed tone.
George must’ve been wearing this watch when he fell. I’ll never forget Tanya telling me about the day George died. They were in the grocery store when he collapsed. She rushed him to the hospital, and he never left. Heart attack.
I run out to the car to grab the lockbox. “Do you think that’s the code?”
Dani looks at me with a haunted stare. We both know it’s the right code. We’ve learned the hard way during this scavenger hunt that there’s no way to prepare ourselves for what Tanya has left behind. All we can do is face it together.
She types the four digits into the lockbox and it pops open.
There are two things in the box. Our next clue, written on the back of a deposit slip from some random bank in Chicago, and a marriage license. Dated after George’s death. For Tanya. And another man.
Chapter Sixteen
Dani
“Sometimes you have to fall to find your way.” —Tanya
MARRIED. MARRIED? TANYA WAS MARRIED TOsomeone we didn’t know about? How could that be?
If she did, I’m happy for her, but Tanya only ever talked about George. He hung the moon in her eyes. I don’t see anyone coming close to that for her.
