“Get what out of my house?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. He just said to give you this message and you’d understand.”
“Well, I don’t understand. And why didn’t he just call me himself? Why’d he have you call?”
“I dunno,” MJ said.
This whole thing was weird. But I was too tired to figure it out. “Was that it? Everything else okay?”
“Yup, that was it. See you at the office tomorrow?”
“Yes.” I was about to say goodnight when a thought occurred to me. “You didn’t tell your uncle about the break-in, did you?”
“Yeah,” MJ said. “Was I not supposed to? I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“It’s not a secret. I’m just wondering why you told him.”
“He asked how you were doing, and I told him some dumb ass broke into your house and didn’t steal nothing. You think the message has something to do with that?”
“I have no idea,” I said, but I was wondering the same thing. The neighborhood kids pulling a prank theory never made sense to me. But I could imagine someone breaking in looking for something specific, then leaving when he didn’t find it because that something was still in the zippered compartment of my purse. “When you talk to your uncle, does he usually ask about me?”
“I dunno. Why? You want me to tell him you was asking about him? I don’t think Mr. Guardia’s gonna like that.”
I laughed. “What do you know about me and Mr. Guardia?” MJ had been there the day we ran into each other at the beach, but he hadn’t seen us together since.
“I hear things,” he said. “I got ears, ya know.”
I didn’t need to see the grin on his face. I could hear it in his voice. “Oh yeah, what kind of things?”
MJ made smooching sounds into the phone, and I laughed again.
“You’re pretty good at that. You wouldn’t be practicing on Olivia, would you?”
I imagined MJ turning bright red because that’s what happened the last time I asked him about Olivia. Although he swore they weren’t dating, just hanging out together sometimes. Whatever that meant. I received a similar answer when I’d asked Olivia about MJ.
“Goodnight, Lawyer Mom,” MJ said in a singsong voice.
“Goodnight, MJ.”
I was smiling when I ended the call, but then I thought of Alex’s cryptic message and my smile disappeared. The “it” Alex wanted out of my house had to be the flash drive. There was nothing else. But why did he think whatever was on the flash drive was valuable enough to steal? He had no more knowledge of what it contained than I did.
I considered calling Daniel back but dismissed the idea. I knew if I told him about MJ’s message, he would get mad at me all over again that I’d allowed Alex to come to my house, then he’d tell me the break-in had nothing to do with the flash drive and I was being paranoid.
I hoped he was right about the paranoia because the alternative was terrifying. If someone was willing to break into my house to steal the flash drive, what else were they willing to do?
Chapter 20
I stopped at the bank the next morning. Maybe Alex was being paranoid and maybe I was too, but it wouldn’t hurt to err on the side of caution. My safe deposit box was the most secure place I could think of to store the flash drive until I could figure out what to do next.
After the bank manager directed me to a tiny windowless room, I lifted the lid on the long metal safe deposit box and pulled out the contents one by one. The last time I’d opened the box was the week after Jonah and Amelia’s funeral. That’s when I’d discovered the second life insurance policy. I didn’t expect to find anything that earth shattering today. No open-in-the-event-of-my-death letter I’d somehow missed before. But I did wonder if perhaps Jonah had left something inside the box that in my haze of shock and grief I’d overlooked. Something that could help explain why he felt the need to tape a flash drive to the bottom of Amelia’s diaper caddy.
I pulled out all three of our birth certificates, social security cards, copies of our passports, my grandmother’s pearls, and the deed to our house. There were no post-it notes stuck between the pages or passwords written in the margins. Nothing was amiss. I stared at the copy of Jonah’s passport. The photo was old, taken before we got engaged, when our future together was filled with possibility. I would never have imagined ten years later Jonah wouldn’t be alive to renew.
I smiled as I remembered how Jonah had fooled me with this passport. It was my birthday and we’d gone to one of those special-occasion restaurants for dinner. When he placed the flat rectangular box on the table while we waited for our dessert, I’d thought he’d bought me the pendant necklace he knew I wanted. We’d spotted it together when we’d been out shopping a few weeks earlier. I’d tried it on and asked him if he thought I should buy it. He was noncommittal, which I’d interpreted as maybe I’ll buy it for you since my birthday was coming up.
The box was the right size and shape for a necklace, so when I’d ripped off the silver wrapping paper and lifted the lid, I was sure I was going to find the pendant inside. I didn’t even try to hide my disappointment as I unfolded the tissue paper and discovered the slim blue book. “Oh. You finally got a passport.”
I’d been surprised when he first told he didn’t have a passport. My parents got me one when I was a baby. Jonah had explained he’d only left the country once on a road trip to Mexico with his brother, and at the time you didn’t need a passport if you crossed the southern border by land.
I’d checked underneath the passport, hoping there were some airline tickets too, but there weren’t any. The box was empty.
“I thought you’d be happy,” he said, taking in the, no doubt, unhappy expression on my face. “Now we can travel.”
“I am happy,” I lied.
“Damnit, I knew I should’ve bought you that necklace.”
I shrugged. I’d just buy it for myself. I should’ve done so to begin with instead of hoping he’d take the hint.
Then the waiter arrived with a plate of profiteroles, which he set down in the center of the table with two forks. I tasted them first and moaned. “These are so good.”
Jonah took a bite. “Not bad.”
“Not bad? Are you kidding me?” Jonah wasn’t a dessert person. He only ordered it for me.
“You think they’re as good here as they are in France?”
“How would I know,” I mumbled with my mouth full of pastry. I’d only been to France once, when I was seven. My parents were forced to take me on their long-planned anniversary trip because my aunt, who was supposed to babysit me while they were away, got stuck in some war-torn country and couldn’t get back in time. All I really remembered about France were the many art museums my parents dragged me to and then not getting to see the Palace of Versailles, the one tourist site I’d actually wanted to visit, because we’d gotten lost on our last day in Paris and missed the train.
