“Ninety-seven,” he finally said.
I found the section that looked like it ran older and worked my way forward. The boxes were heavy — real paper, dense.
“These are all nineties along here,” I said. “Through about two thousand and three.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then I heard him stand, heard his knees on the stone, and he came to where I was. Stood beside meand looked at the shelf and reached past me for a box near the top.
His arm was six inches from my face. I could see the tattoo up close — scripture running along the inside of his forearm, small and precise, the ink slightly faded.
He pulled the box down, set it on the worktable and opened it.
I went back to looking without being asked.
We worked like that for a while. Him going through the box, me reading labels, the cellar doing nothing but being cold and old around us.
“This isn't what I thought it was,” I said, looking around.
He didn't answer.
“The cellar.” I pulled a box out, looked at the label, put it back. “I thought—” I stopped. It felt stupid to say out loud.I thought there would be something without a head down here. I thought the room would explainyou.
“I know what you thought,” he said.
I looked at him. He was still going through the box, not looking at me.
“The locked ones,” I said, with a nod toward the steel cabinets.
“Ledgers.” He turned a page. “Going back to my grandfather.”
“Why are they locked and the others aren’t?”
He let out a heavy exhale through his nose. “Misdirection.”
“What do you mean?” I arched an eyebrow, leaning against the wall. Cold.
“In the unlikely scenario of an audit—” he explained, paging through old, crumbling folders, “—they would seize the ones with the lock first.”
“And these,” I gestured to the open shelves, “are what? Decoys?”
“No,” Judah said, the word clipped. “They're the real records. Hidden in plain sight.”
I stared at him, trying to determine if he was being serious. His face gave nothing away, focused on the papers before him.
“That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.”
He looked up then, a flash of irritation crossing his features. “Is it? The IRS has been to this house exactly once in fifty-seven years. They took what was locked. Left with nothing that mattered,” he said, then added, “Granted they were investigating tax fraud.”
“This is not about taxes then, is it?”
Judah sighed. “No.”
I turned back to the shelf.
“Here.” My hand landed on a box with a green edge visible under the lid. Not labeled. I pulled it out and looked and there it was — a ledger, green cloth cover, spine cracked with age. I held it out.
He looked up.
He came over and took it from my hand. His fingers brushed mine and neither of us addressed it. He opened it on the table, turned to somewhere near the back, ran his finger down a column of numbers.
