He turned back to the dark forest, ending the conversation. I went up to my room, the small attic room I had slept in since I was five. I lay under the heavy quilts, listening to the house settle. I could hear my father snoring in the room below. I pulled the velvet box out of my pocket. I took out the key and the piece of paper. The number was written in blue ink: 824199.
It looked like a date or a combination. My auditor brain began to spin. Keys open locks. Combinations open safes. Storage units hold physical assets. $92 million. The number Darren had thrown around. If it was true—if Grandpa really had that kind of money—why was he living here? And more importantly, if he gave it to me, what would my family do? I thought about my father’s cruel joke: Janitor. I thought about Bri’s laughter: Drama queen. I thought about my mother’s envy: Favoritism. If this key led to what I thought it led to, they wouldn’t just be angry. They would be vicious.
I clutched the key in my fist until the metal bit into my palm. Grandpa’s words echoed in the darkness: Wait until you are ready to be hated. I fell asleep with the key under my pillow, dreaming of vaults and wolves, unable to tell the difference between the two.
I shoved the velvet box deep into the pocket of my heavy wool coat and drove back to Portland the morning after Christmas. The roads were plowed. The sky was a crisp, indifferent blue, and I convinced myself that the entire scene on the porch had been a product of too much isolation and too little oxygen. Grandpa was just being sentimental. He was an old man trying to inject a little mystery into a life that had become too quiet. The key was probably for a trunk full of old war letters, or as my father had joked, a literal shed full of rusted tools. I told myself to focus. I had a job. I had deadlines.
January in Maine is a brutal, unforgiving month. It is a time when the sun gives up and the wind learns how to cut through brick. I buried myself in work at Marigold and Lantern. I audited a mid-sized construction firm that was clearly inflating its assets. I drank too much bad office coffee. I stayed late, staring at spreadsheets until the numbers blurred, trying to ignore the heavy, cold lump of the key that I had transferred from my coat to the bottom drawer of my nightstand. I did not call Grandpa. I thought I had time. I thought I would go up in February for his birthday. I thought wrong.
The call came on a Tuesday morning, three weeks after Christmas. It was 10:14 in the morning. I was in the middle of a meeting about expense report irregularities. My phone buzzed on the table. It was a number I did not recognize, but the area code was Cedar Ridge. A cold dread, colder than the air outside, washed over me. I excused myself and walked into the hallway.
“Hello, is this Scarlet Flores?” A man’s voice, heavy, tired, official.
“Yes.”
“This is Chief Miller with the Cedar Ridge Police Department. I am sorry to make this call. Ms. Flores, we found your grandfather, Elliot Quinn, this morning.”
The hallway seemed to tilt sideways. Found him.
“It looks like a massive heart attack,” Miller said, his voice softening. “The mailman noticed he had not picked up his post for two days. We went in for a wellness check. He was in his armchair. It looked peaceful. Scarlet… he was just gone. The coroner says it likely happened Sunday night.”
Sunday night. While I was watching a documentary on Netflix and eating takeout Thai food, the only person who actually loved me was dying alone in a drafty cabin four hours away.
“I am coming,” I choked out. “I am coming right now.”
The drive back to Cedar Ridge was a blur of gray highway and white knuckles. I broke every speed limit on the interstate. My mind was a loop of our last conversation on the porch: If I am not here tomorrow. He knew. Somehow he had known his heart was giving out. And I had left. I had driven away because I was uncomfortable, because I wanted to get back to my safe, sterile life. The guilt was a physical weight in my chest, heavy and sharp. I should have stayed. I should have been there to hold his hand. I should have made sure the fire did not go out.
When I arrived at the funeral home in Cedar Ridge—a converted Victorian house that smelled of lilies and formaldehyde—the parking lot was already full. My parents’ Lexus was there. Uncle Darren’s Hummer took up two spaces. They had beaten me here. Of course they had. Bad news travels fast, but the scent of money travels faster. I walked inside, shaking the snow from my boots. The viewing room was quiet, but it lacked the heavy, suffocating silence of genuine grief. It felt more like a boardroom before a hostile takeover.
My mother, Linda, was sitting in the front row wearing a black dress that cost more than my car. She was dabbing at dry eyes with a tissue. My father, Paul, was pacing by the window, checking his watch. Uncle Darren and Aunt Kelsey were whispering in the corner. Bri was sitting on a folding chair, scrolling through her phone, looking bored.
“Scarlet,” my mother said when she saw me. “You are finally here. You look terrible. Did you not brush your hair?”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, my voice hollow. I walked past her to the open casket. Grandpa Elliot looked smaller than ever. The mortician had tried to smooth out the lines of pain on his face, but he just looked waxy and distant. He was wearing his best suit, the one from the 1990s. I reached out and touched his cold hand.
I am sorry. I thought I had time. I am so sorry I left you.
“So,” my father said, coming up behind me. He did not look at his father’s body. He looked at the door. “Is the lawyer coming or what? We have to get this sorted. I cannot stay up here all week. I have meetings.”
“He died two days ago, Dad,” I whispered, not turning around. “Can we just be here for him?”
“We are here, Scarlet,” Uncle Darren said, stepping forward. “But life goes on, and Dad had affairs to settle. Complex affairs, if the rumors are true.”
The door opened, and a man walked in. He was tall, thin, with gray hair swept back and wire-rimmed glasses. He carried a battered leather briefcase that looked as old as the town itself. This was Harold Mayes. He had been Grandpa’s lawyer for forty years.
“Mr. Mayes,” my mother said, standing up immediately. “Thank God. We were wondering when we could start the proceedings.”
Harold Mayes looked at my mother with a gaze that could peel paint. “Mrs. Quinn, I am here to pay my respects to my friend. The reading of the will can wait until after the service.”
“We would prefer to do it now,” my father said, his voice tight. “We are all here. It saves another trip. Dad was a practical man. He would not want us wasting gas.”
Harold sighed. It was a sound of deep, profound exhaustion. “Very well. If that is what the family wishes.”
He walked over to a small table in the corner and set his briefcase down. The room seemed to shrink. The air grew thick with anticipation. My stomach churned. I stood by the casket, feeling like a stranger at my own family’s gathering. Harold opened the briefcase and pulled out a single thick document. He put on his reading glasses and looked at us over the rims.
“Elliot Quinn was a man of simple means in his later years,” Harold began.
“Skip the preamble, Harold,” Uncle Darren said, leaning forward. “Just read the numbers.”
Harold cleared his throat. “‘To my eldest son, Paul Quinn, I leave the family cabin at Cedar Ridge and the surrounding ten acres of land. It is my hope that you will keep it in the family.’”
My father blinked. “The cabin? That is it? The place is falling apart. It is a money pit.”
“‘To my second son, Darren Quinn,’” Harold continued. “‘I leave my 1998 Ford pickup truck and the contents of my personal savings account at Cedar Ridge Community Bank, totaling $8,420.’”
“Eight thousand?” Darren’s face turned purple. “That is a joke. That does not even cover the cost of my flight home.”
