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“A long, cylindrical case. I saw it in here a couple of weeks ago during one of Dad’s parties.” Slamming the top drawer of the desk, I move on to the next.
“So, we’re looking for a map?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure what it is, but he didn’t want me looking at it when I spotted it the first time.”
Declan purses his lips. “Well, if it is a map, maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll lead us to an abundance of booty.”
His brows waggle obnoxiously as I slide the second drawer closed with a frustrated sigh. “I’m hoping it leads us to the truth.”
“Be cooler if it was booty…” he grumbles, crouching to look through the cabinets beneath the shelves. When a punishing gust bumps us against the edges of the wet slip, his face turns ashen.
“Just try not to vomit on the rug, all right?”
“You know I have a sensitive stomach,” he whines. “Besides, what is this thing going to prove, anyway?”
I yank the deep filing drawer open on my left. “Nothing… Everything… I don’t fucking know.”
“Truly profound,” he muses. “You’re a master wordsmith, Anderson.”
“Fuck off, all right? Pen thinks Dad has bigger plans for Seaside than just that one residential unit, and I’m trying to show her he’s not the vicious tyrant she believes him to be.”
Show her, or yourself? a voice whispers through my mind.
I remove a stack of files from the drawer and start flipping through them.
“And if you find something incriminating, then what?”
Inside the first folder is a contract for several smaller condos we opened in Tauntuma. I toss them aside, continuing my search. “Then I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”
Last night, I read through the contract Dad gave me, memorizing every damning detail on all thirty pages.
Yes, my name is on the document as a co-owner, but there’s only one way to ensure the group home is out of my father’s hands for good, and that’s precisely how I ended up going toe to toe with Ricardo this morning before writing him a check that would clear their debt with the bank.
Naturally, he was reluctant, spewing empty threats and a curse that my balls would spontaneously combust. At least, I assume that’s what he said; I don’t speak Spanish. But we’re backed against the wall, and though it may hurt his pride, he knew time wasn’t on our sides to find another option.
“There’s nothing here.” What I expect to be relief is nothing but a cavernous void when I come up empty-handed for any other contracts or plans for Seaside.
Declan moves to the back wall, continuing to search for the case, but I turn for the glass-encased shelves behind me. I find more folders and stacks of papers to sort through, but my hand stills, hovering over a photo album on the very bottom shelf.
No bigger than the printed photos inside, the time-worn album creaks when I ease it open.
The first page is a picture of me and Dad sitting on the couch at my grandmother’s house. I can’t be older than two because she’d passed away when I turned three—but the smile on Dad’s face as I hold my arms out for him is so foreign, it damn near knocks me on my ass.
The proof that he was—is—a good dad is right here in my hands.
I flip the page, finding a crinkled, stained picture of me and my parents on my first day of high school. I’m grinning so big that my cheeks dimple, and Mom has an arm slung over Dad’s shoulders.
We look happy, and my chest aches to know that the following year, we would be homeless, living out of our van and scouring sidewalks for coins to wash our clothes at the laundromat.
Dad’s lost some of the light in his eyes as I scour the rest of the photos. When I reach the last picture in the album, it’s replaced by determination and unshakable confidence.
We’re on an airplane, on our way to Topica Bay, and I’d fallen asleep on his shoulder. He’s giving Mom a thumbs up, and that grin holds all the promise of the future he wanted, no matter what it cost him. A risk he would take ten times over if it meant we’d be where we are now.
Little did we know how much our lives would change that summer.
Especially mine.
“What the fuck?” Declan says, startling me back to the task at hand.
