Chapter Six
"Bailey, please."
"Mom!" I yell. Gazing between Andrew and mom, I storm off towards the front door.
"Where the hell do you think your going?" I hear mom say behind me,
"To figure out what you and Andrew are hiding." I tell them. As I leave I could feel the tension that must be going through Mom and Andrew.
I hear Ian run out the front door.
"What are we doing?" He yells from the porch, my jaw trembles as I try to fight the tears from flooding down my cheeks.
"There's something that they're hiding, and I'm going back to my old house. Please?" I plead to Ian, he moves towards me, glaring at my eyes, he opens the front car door and gets in, I take it as an invitation to hop in.
The car continues past the two signs that separate Vanilla Valley and High Hill Road.
"Ian?" I ask, with a distraught tone in my voice, I turn my head towards him, his eyes narrow and forward, his jaw clenched. I hate feeling this way.
"Do you love me."
Those words definitely struck him, his eyes squint with sorrow. His hand firm on the steering wheel, his bottom lip tucked in. He sighs,
"Yes." He replied with the utmost pity.
I nod my head and turn away from him, gazing at that trees that seem to move, sometimes that's how we feel. Remember when we were little kids; and how we thought that the actual trees and houses were moving but it was actually the car moving past them, it's like from the very beginning we've always wanted to change time and pause and rewind, unfortunately that's not how life works, and that's the first lie that was ever told to us.
"Do you love me, Bailey?" I glance at him for a second, without hesitation,
"Yes." I respond with. I don't say anything else and I let a silence fall in between us. He turns over to the gated suburban neighborhood. He turns to a tiny little brick hut at the front gate, with a large window.
"Who are you visiting?" The old lady asks while setting her book down.
"I'm here to see the Dalton family." Ian responds. I look over the houses and I try to mute out Ian and the guard talking. I hear bits and pieces of their conversation. We came unannounced. Looking at these houses reminds me of all the things I don't wanna be reminded of. I wish I could go back. As I'm dozing off, I hear the gates open and Ian pulls into the residency. We turn over to the end of the cul-de-sac. My house, white and grand, some people must mistake it for the White House, large floor to ceiling windows on the side of the large dark brown French doors.
"You ready?" Ian asks me and I give him a nod. We arrive at the front door and I knock. Twice. Nobody answers.
"Maybe we should just lea-"
"Hello?" A women's voice comes behind me as I'm heading towards the car, I look back. Oh god, this is gonna be difficult. She recognizes me right away,
"What do you two want." She crosses her arms with her pink and brown cardigan covering her chest. She's wearing these ugly Prada brown shoes. She has wrinkles all around her eyes, and the blue color of her eye has faded away from a gray color, just like my mom used to have; she has blond, wavy shoulder- length hair. She's skinny, and she's pretty. The house that was once mine is now hers, she decorates it way differently than my mom does. I can tell by the Christmas tree placed in the foyer, my mom always put it in the center. There's no longer pictures of me and my brother with forced smiles and uncomfortable itchy Christmas sweaters on. It's her kids, and unlike us, look actually happy.
"We are both here to apologize, and I would like to show you something if it's not a bother." I say with confident words. I grew up around million airs, including my dad who dealt with many difficult situations with people who tried pulling lawsuits on my him, I examined how those people talked, they had a very sophisticated vocabulary, described things in an extremely meticulous way. I knew manners and I knew how to use my words to manipulate people, I still know how. That's one good thing I've learned from my father,
"Come on in." She says, with a half smile on. Me and Ian both look at each other, and walk in cautiously. Her house smells like pine and old Christmas candles, there's not really scent for it, it just smells like what you'd imagine Christmas to smell like. I look around at how different their house looks like than how it used to look like when it belonged to me. She sets us down at the dining room table and pours us both cups of tea and elegantly placed herself right in her chair. She gestures her hands. I smile half heartedly.
"This key used to belong to a safe here, according to my mother. The only safe that I can remember is being in the office, do you mind if I can open it?" I ask, I slide the key over to her and she scoffs,
"There is no safe in my office, everything was taken away when our family moved in here." She sips her tea and than licks her teeth. Quickly, I think of all the possible reasons I'd need to go in there.
"Well, please let us check, if there is I'll give you the key." I say as I move the key from the table to my right pocket.
"If you must." She says and gets out of her chair, me and Ian follow her to my dads "study" if you will. Or, their office now. She opens the grand dark brown French doors with fancy designs carved on to top and bottom parts of the doors, leaving a pattern full of swirls and circles.
"There's nothing to see, but you can search if you want." And Mrs. Dalton walks off. I walk into the office, the window is the only source of light for that room, everything else is all dark.
"Where should we start?" I ask while my eyes trail around the room. Ian shrugs and starts off at the book shelf, as he pulls a variety amount of books down I wonder over to the desk area, on the russet ornate desk lays a stack of jumbled white papers with diminutive words written from the the very top to the very bottom of each page. The only thing that sticks out the most is the hurried cursive written signatures that is Mr. Daltons name. Going through the papers is like looking for a needle in a haystack, everything looks the same and is big and bulky, and the tiny, thin, long piece of metal most likely blends in with the hay. I reach to the bottom of all the pages and I find nothing. I'm not going to give up. Maybe it's in his desk-drawers. I move myself over to the drawers and surprisingly they aren't locked. Nothing really important is in there unless you consider gel pens and tarnished school bus yellow pencils important. The chair sits on top of a fresh white carpet. The only thing I could think would be under there is a key to some unknown hidden passageway. I move the chair from the carpet, and I still hear Ian rummaging through all the books, it's a good idea but I don't think he'll find anything there. I inched the carpet a little and the weight of it pulls me down a little, I clench my jaws and move myself along with the carpet, as I continue backing up, so does the carpet and what reveals itself is absolutely sickening.
An in-ground safe. engraved deep on the top of the shiny metal reads "227 Century Safe" I look down at my palm, the key visibly glued to my hand with sweat. On top of the key reads the same number, I knew it matched.
"Ian." I say staggered. He comes over from behind me, leaving a muck of books behind himself to clean up later. He gasps. I gulp and breath in and wait for about two seconds before I start to try to unlock this. I ram the key inside the lock hole and I swivel it to the right, and than to the left. It unlocks. My heart drops all the way down into my stomach, they say a heart weighs between ten to eight ounces, I wouldn't be surprised if it tore through my stomach and rolled onto the floor with the force I just felt. I hesitate before I continue to open the safe, worried about what I will find. I keep the door ajar for a moment as I gather myself and prepare myself for whatever I see inside this safe. I yank the door all the way open and it falls sideways, leaving a loud echo that continues on for a long period of time. Checks.
Millions if not billions of checks leave in front of me. My eyes widen and I start going through the checks, all of the names are crossed out by black ink, all I see is the unusual large amount of money that's being written on these checks.
thousands of dollars.
All I see is when they were written and who they were written too. They were all written to my father. Thousand dollar checks written to my father years ago with crossed out names. I examine one of checks which I pulled from the very top of the stack, six thousand dollars were written on this check, it was written on October 1, 1993.
What the hell is this.
I continue to look for more checks, hopefully looking for ones that were written more recently. One strikes my eye the most.
The needle in the haystack.
"November 18, 1994." Is the only thing I first notice on the check. That was the most recent one, followed by other ones that I notice, written six months ago.
Oh my god.
The name is erased off but very indistinct letters show, D. A. N. Are the only letters I can almost see, or make out. Has Mrs. Dalton been writing secret checks to my father, but why are there so many especially from years ago, and it continues today. A million of thoughts race inside my head and without thinking I storm out the door. Walking into the Daltons great room re-decorated to their liking just added more fuel to the fire.
"Can you explain to me what all these checks in your husbands office are doing here?" I yell. Mrs. Dalton comes out from the kitchen and like an arrow from a bow she takes a grip of the check in my hand and looks down at it as she is thrown off balance.
"What are you doing with these." She looks up at me, and stares intensely into my eyes. You can tell she's scared.
The question is, why though?
"What do you mean? I wanna know why this was in your husbands office?" I ask grabbing the check back. I hear a rumble of unpleased footsteps run down the staircase. Her daughter, Cornelia Dalton comes face to face with me.
"What kind of uncongenial run-in is this?" She asks in her loud penetrating voice. I start to form a sentence but I'm quickly shut down as she starts to speak again,
"Get you and your rot in the swim boyfriend out of my house." She turns to her mother and lays her hands on her shoulders, comforting her. She looks back up at us again,
"Absence yourself, you shrews."
I roll my eyes and gesture Ian to follow me out the front door. As we exit the home, I remember that I still have the check I seized from their home and Mrs. Dalton.
"Ian." I say and he looks over towards me,
"What do you think they're hiding?"