I turn to him from the fridge, feigning shock.“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“You’re lucky Dane and Jett aren’t here, because they’d be on our side too,” Piper shoots back.“Team Casey.In case that wasn’t clear.”
“You’re supposed to be on Team Griffin,” I clarify.“Which will, you know, eventually merge with Team Casey.If all goes well.”
Piper’s eyes light up.“Do you have a plan?”
“Just look for the numbers,” I tell her, stowing the cans of red beans before shutting the kitchen cabinet.I don’t have a plan, because the logistics of the rest of the week are complicated.Casey is in Chicago; I need to be at the Cleveland airport tomorrow evening for a flight to Colorado.I’ll be gone for a week.Yet it hardly seems right to wait a week to ask Casey if she’ll talk to me in person.
Asher looks at his phone and excuses himself to take a call, but I only catch hushed tones near the front door.After I’m done storing the last of Mom’s groceries, Piper shrieks.
“Here it is!”She holds it up triumphantly.“Oh my god, it was in the drawer with all the tea towels.Let’s go try it!”
Mom takes it, holding it pinched between her thumb and forefinger like keeping it visible in front of everyone will prevent us from losing it yet again.We head to the living room, where the safe has occupied a forgotten corner like the quietest pet in the world.
Piper kneels in front of the safe.“Should we call Jett and Dane?”
“Dane’s on the water today,” I reply.“He’s giving some potential investors a tour of the islands.”
“And Jett’s elbow deep in some BMW,” Asher says.
“Let’s open it,” Mom concludes.“If the numbers work, that is.”
“Here goes nothin’.”Piper sticks her tongue past her lips as she gets on the level of the combination lock.She spins the dial, cross-referencing every five seconds the sheet that Mom holds, like she’s afraid the numbers will change.Left, long spin right, left again.
Once the numbers are in, she takes a deep breath.“Ok, I did the numbers, but now what?”
“Turn the handle,” Mom says softly.
Piper does as she’s told.There’s a deepclunkof bolts retracting.
“Oh my god,” Piper whispers.She pulls the door, and it swings open.
“Holy shit.Mom.You really did pull the safe numbers out of the ether,” I say.My mind is spinning.How is this possible?Part of me was expecting—hoping?—that the numbers she’d said were random.There’s still something a bit unsettling about accepting that my mom has become mildly psychic after the bakery fire that almost killed her.
But here we are.Piper sticks her hand in and begins pulling things out.There’s a small wooden box, like a miniature pirate’s chest, locked with a padlock.There’s an old photo printed on a canvas pulled taut over a square wooden frame.Piper pulls out a leather journal, locked down with another padlock.A pocket watch.A stack of papers.
Mom begins rifling through the papers.She gasps a moment later.
“I think these are your father’s things.”
She shows us a copy of a passport application.My father’s details are all over it, with a small, faded photo stapled to the top.He looks young, maybe early twenties.
“This is from before we even met,” she whispers, staring hard at the photo.Then she looks back at the safe.“These must be all his things.But how did it end up in the basement of the bakery?”
“You’ve never seen this safe before, right?”Asher asks.
“Never.I wonder how it got there.I wonder if he even remembered that he had it,” Mom muses.
We begin handling each item, one by one.The papers aren’t particularly exciting, just humdrum documents from roughly a two-year period of my father’s early life.Piper peers inside the safe one more time and sucks in sharply.
“There’s one more thing,” she says.
A moment later, she pulls out something that fits in the palm of her hand.
It looks like a beaded figurine.Red and white prismatic light glints in the afternoon light as Piper inspects it from different angles.
Then her lip starts quivering.
