Chapter 1 - THE GIRLS ON MARA’S PORCH
The first thing I saw was blood on the snow.
The second was two little girls staring at me as though I had come to decide whether they deserved to live.
They stood barefoot on the porch of my dead wife’s mountain house outside Nederland, Colorado, clutching pieces of stale bread in blue, shaking hands.
I killed the engine.
For almost a minute, I didn’t move.
I had not been back to the house since Mara died eleven months earlier.
Not since I carried the last cardboard box down the steps and found one of her coffee mugs beside the sink with a lipstick mark still on it.
I had driven up that Friday because the realtor wanted an answer by Monday.
Sell.
Rent.
Keep pretending the house could stay frozen exactly as she left it.
Then I saw the girls.
I stepped into the wind.
“Lily?”
The taller one pulled the other behind her.
She was eight.
So was Rose.
Mara’s nieces.
My nieces by marriage, although Vanessa had spent years reminding me blood mattered more.
“Uncle Daniel?”
My chest tightened.
“Where are your shoes?”
Lily looked toward the open front door.
“They got wet.”
Rose was crying silently.
There was blood beneath her left foot.
I climbed the steps.
“Can I look?”
She backed away.
Lily shook her head.
“Mom said not to talk to strangers.”
“I’m not a stranger.”
“Aunt Mara said you’d come.”
The wind seemed to stop for half a second.
“What?”
Lily reached for her sister’s hand.
“Aunt Mara said if we ever had to come here, you would come too.”
Mara had been dead nearly a year.
I unlocked the mudroom cabinet and found two old pairs of wool socks.
They swallowed the girls’ feet, but it got them off the frozen boards.
Inside, the house looked as though someone had tried to beat a confession out of it.
Drawers dumped.
Sofa cushions slit open.
Books ripped from shelves.
Two floorboards near the fireplace had been pried up.
Every framed photograph had been removed from the walls.
Some lay shattered in the dining room.
Others were simply gone.
“What happened?”
Lily said nothing.
Rose whispered, “Mom was looking for treasure.”
I crouched.
“When was Mom here?”
“Wednesday.”
It was Saturday.
My stomach dropped.
“Where is she now?”
Lily stared at the floor.
“She left.”
“With who?”
Rose looked at her sister.
Lily answered.
“Mr. Grant.”
Grant Holloway.
Vanessa’s fiancé.
Financial adviser.
Expensive watches.
Perfect teeth.
The kind of man who explained wine to waiters.
“How long were you supposed to stay here?”
“Until we found it.”
“Found what?”
“The treasure.”
“What treasure?”
Lily shook her head.
“Mom said Aunt Mara hid it.”
Rose held up the bread.
“We found this.”
I stared.
“That’s what you’ve been eating?”
Neither answered.
I opened the refrigerator.
Dead.
The electricity had been cut.
The pantry was almost empty.
Crackers.
Salt.
A jar of cinnamon.
One bag of bread stiff enough to use as lumber.
My grief stopped feeling like grief.
It became something colder.
I found the propane heater in the utility closet, opened the curtains for daylight, and wrapped both girls in Mara’s old wool blankets.
Then I called Boulder County dispatch.
Not an old friend.
Not a favor.
911.
“Two children have been left alone at a residence for approximately three days. One has a foot injury. The house has been searched or vandalized.”
The dispatcher kept me on the line until deputies and paramedics arrived.
I did not question the girls again.
That mattered.
I used to prosecute financial crimes for the Colorado Attorney General’s office.
I had worked enough child-abuse cases beside other prosecutors to know that frightened children should not be interviewed six times by six adults because every adult wants answers.
Paramedics treated Rose’s foot.
Small laceration.
Mild dehydration in both girls.
Cold exposure, but no frostbite.
Deputy Aaron Pike photographed the house.
“Any idea what somebody was looking for?”
“No.”
“Cash?”
“Mara hated cash.”
“Jewelry?”
“She owned one expensive necklace. I buried her in it.”
He looked at me.
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
A child-welfare caseworker named Stephanie Park arrived from Boulder County.
She knelt beside the twins.
“You’re not in trouble.”
Lily immediately asked, “Is Mom?”
Stephanie didn’t lie.
“I don’t know yet.”
While she spoke to them, I walked into the mudroom to get my coat.
Lily followed.
“Uncle Daniel.”
I turned.
She looked toward the deputy.
Then reached inside the torn lining of her puffy jacket.
Something small fell into her palm.
A brass key.
Old-fashioned.
A rectangular tag hung from it.
314.
“Where did you get that?”
“Aunt Mara.”
My throat tightened.
“When?”
“Before she got really sick.”
Mara had taken the girls for a weekend six weeks before entering hospice.
I remembered.
I had stayed in Denver because she said she wanted “girl time.”
Lily whispered, “She sewed it in.”
“Why?”
“She said if bad people came looking for what she left us, give it to the man who still wears her ring.”
I looked at my left hand.
My wedding band was still there.
Rose appeared in the doorway.
“Mom knew about the key.”
I turned.
“How?”
“She kept asking where Aunt Mara put it.”
Lily grabbed her sister’s hand.
“Rose.”
“What?”
Rose’s lower lip trembled.
“Mom said if we didn’t find it, Mr. Grant would take us somewhere we’d never see her again.”
Deputy Pike had stepped close enough to hear.
His expression changed.
Then Rose whispered the detail that made the entire room go still.
“Mr. Grant said Aunt Mara hid the proof in this house.”
May you like
Not money.
Proof.
Related Stories
