Chapter 2 - THE STORAGE UNIT

“Who’s there?” I called out, my voice cracking.

I grabbed a heavy metal flashlight from the top of the desk and held it up like a club. The corrugated metal walls seemed to shrink around me.

“I said, who is back there?”

The stack of cardboard boxes shifted. A small figure stepped out from the shadows.

I lowered the flashlight, my breath catching in my throat.

It was a child.

He looked to be about ten years old. He was wearing an oversized gray hoodie, his hands shoved deep into the pockets. His dark hair was messy, and he was shivering.

I recognized his face instantly.

He was the little boy from the photograph I had found behind Mom’s fireplace. Only older now, taller, his cheekbones sharper. He had my brother Thomas’s dark eyes.

“Are you Rebecca?” he asked. His voice was small, guarded.

“Yes,” I whispered, dropping to my knees so I was eye-level with him. “Yes, I’m Rebecca. Who are you, sweetheart?”

“I’m Leo,” he said. He pulled a worn silver object from his pocket.

It was a rosary. My mother’s rosary. The one she carried to church every Sunday for forty years.

“Grandma told me if she ever didn’t come back, I was supposed to wait here,” Leo said, his chin trembling. “She said you would come with the key.”

Tears spilled over my eyelashes. “Grandma put you in a storage unit?”

“Only for today,” he said quickly, defending her. “She usually hides me at Mrs. Gable’s farm. But Mrs. Gable went to the hospital, and Grandma said the bad lady was looking for me. She told me to stay here where it’s safe until she got back.”

My stomach churned. Mom had hidden a child. Thomas’s child.

“When did Grandma leave you here, Leo?”

“Two days ago,” he whispered, a tear finally escaping and cutting a clean line down his dusty cheek. “She promised she’d come right back with food. But she didn’t. Is she mad at me?”

“Oh, Leo.” I pulled him into my arms. He was so cold, so frail. “No, baby. She’s not mad at you. Grandma… Grandma went to heaven two days ago.”

Leo stiffened against me, then buried his face in my shoulder and let out a broken, quiet sob that shattered my heart.

My mother had died suddenly of a heart attack. She hadn’t abandoned him. She had died trying to protect him.

I stood up, holding Leo’s hand tightly. I grabbed the cigar box with the checks and Thomas’s letter. “Come on. We’re getting out of here. You’re coming home with me.”

“No!” Leo panicked, pulling his hand away. “We can’t! The bad lady will find us.”

“Diane isn’t going to hurt you,” I said fiercely. “I won’t let her.”

“She’s not just a bad lady,” Leo cried, backing away toward the boxes. “She’s the one who took my dad.”

I froze. “What do you mean she took your dad? Thomas?”

Leo nodded, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Four years ago. My dad got really sick. He brought me to Grandma’s house so I wouldn’t go to a foster home. But Aunt Diane was there. She was screaming at my dad.”

I remembered the note on the back of the photo. Thomas came home. Diane must never know where he is.

“What did Diane do, Leo?”

“She told my dad she was going to call the police and tell them he kidnapped me. She said he was a wanted thief. She made him get in her car. She said she was taking him to the hospital, but he never came back. Grandma cried for weeks.”

A sickening realization washed over me. Diane hadn’t just framed Thomas nineteen years ago. When Thomas returned, sick and desperate, Diane had gotten rid of him permanently to ensure he couldn’t claim his share of the inheritance or expose her past.

“We have to go to the police,” I said, grabbing my purse.

“We can’t,” a voice said from the doorway.

I spun around.

Standing in the entrance of the storage unit, blocking our only exit, was Janet. The realtor.

Except she wasn’t holding a leather folder full of real estate listings anymore.