The Mermaid's Mirror - L. K. Madigan [48]
She turned away from the bureau with relief and examined their closet. It was about five feet across, with two sliding mirrored doors pulled shut. Avoiding her guilty reflection, she opened the right side door and looked at the rows of shoeboxes on the shelf. Dragging a chair over to the closet, she stood up on it and opened the box closest to her. Cards and letters addressed to her mom from her dad. She closed the lid. The next box held old CDs. The third and fourth boxes were full of letters, postcards, and photos from other friends and family. None of these boxes seemed to contain anything that Lena should be looking through. Another pang of guilt nudged her.
Shoving aside the shoeboxes, Lena looked deeper on the shelf. At the very end on the left side was a larger metal box, like something for holding files. Now, that looks promising, she thought, noting its lock. She couldn't reach it from her position on the chair, so she got down, closed the right side door, and opened the left. Then she moved the chair to the other side of the closet. She paused to look at the clock. Her dad had been gone for about half an hour.
She climbed up onto the chair again and reached for the metal box. Disappointed, she saw that the lock was too small for her key, and anyway, the box wasn't locked. The tabs on the folders inside read Archive Bank Statements, Past Tax Returns, Legal Documents, and Old. Strange that her parents kept this in the closet instead of in Dad's office.
Lena climbed down off the chair and sat on the floor. She pulled out the file marked Legal Documents. There were the birth certificates for Lena and Cole, and the marriage certificate for her parents: Brian Wayne Whittaker and Allison Lee Briggs.
She glanced at the last legal document. It was a death certificate.
Lena stared at it in dismay. There was her mother's name, Lucy Whittaker, no middle initial. Under cause of death was typed: Suicide by drowning.
CHAPTER 27
Lena let the paper fall from her fingers.
After a long, airless moment, she lay down on the floor, pulling her knees to her chest.
Here was the truth that her father had been unable to tell her. Here was a piece of paper that explained years of "I'm not ready."
Suicide by drowning.
Lena closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry even as her heart cracked deep inside. Her mother had been dead for a dozen years. Yet the stab of pain Lena felt at this new knowledge melted the years away, and that chamber in her heart where she stored her mother's loss opened wide, stacking new grief upon the old.
"Why?" she whispered. "Was being my mom so awful?"
She could feel the ache of tears behind her eyes, and she took deep breaths to help her focus on not crying. She bit down hard on her lower lip. Finally she opened her eyes and sat up. Forty-five minutes had passed since her father had left. She still hadn't found the lock for this key. If she didn't find it today, she felt certain that she could never bring herself to look through her parents' room again.
Lena put the files back in the metal box, in the exact order she'd found them. She placed the metal box on the shelf. She put all the shoeboxes back where they belonged, then closed the sliding doors and put the chair back in the corner. While she worked, she kept her mind carefully blank.
Almost an hour now. Her father would be finished with the shopping and on his way to the sushi restaurant.
Lena looked around the room again. She pushed open the door to their bathroom, but it seemed too small a room to hold any secrets. She knew that her mom hid the few pieces of expensive jewelry she owned in a tissue box, but Lena was not interested in those.
Standing in the middle of the room, Lena closed her eyes and clutched the key hard in her fist, as if she could squeeze an answer out of it. Where do you belong? she thought angrily. I need to know.
When she opened her eyes, the room seemed brighter than before. The sun had moved out from behind the clouds. But one corner of the room remained in shadow. Lena cocked her head,