Chapter 7 - The Red File Box
For several agonizing seconds, the words refused to register in my brain.
This house.
The house where I had spent my weekends scrubbing the floors after Brandon’s wild high school parties. The house where my father had stood in the kitchen and called me an ungrateful, useless disappointment. The house they threatened to kick me out of every single time I dared to stand up for myself.
It wasn’t theirs. It was mine.
Outside, Aunt Renee pounded on the door again, her voice muffled but frantic. “Ava! Are you in there? Are you safe? I’m calling the police to kick this door down!”
My father’s face underwent a terrifying transformation. The angry, commanding mask he had worn my entire life completely slipped away. In its place was the face of a pathetic, defeated man who had been caught in a lie too big to climb out of.
Brandon scrambled to his feet, pointing a trembling finger at me. “She can’t prove it! Dad, tell her she can’t prove it. The deed was corrected. We had it corrected!”
“Corrected?” I asked, the sheer audacity of the word making my stomach turn.
My father slowly reached into the pocket of his flannel bathrobe. His fingers emerged clutching a small, tarnished brass key. It was the key to the fireproof SentrySafe box he kept hidden under the floorboards of his locked office upstairs.
At that exact moment, the loud, commanding ring of the front doorbell echoed through the foyer.
Through the frosted glass of the door, I could clearly see the silhouette of a woman in a tailored navy blazer holding a gold badge against the pane. Next to her stood Aunt Renee, her face streaked with tears of anger.
May you like
My father looked at Brandon. Brandon looked toward the stairs leading up to the office.
And before anyone could utter a sound, my brother bolted. He didn’t run toward the front door to explain himself; he scrambled up the stairs like a rat fleeing a sinking ship, heading straight for my father’s office.
