Chapter 5 - THE PADLOCK ON THE DOOR
The drive to Shelby County took an hour in absolute silence.
Dad sat in the passenger seat, staring blankly at the gold watch in his hands. Chloe sat in the back, her designer coat looking wildly out of place against the cracked leather seats of my old sedan. But she didn't complain. The bitter, vengeful woman who had bought my father’s house had vanished, replaced by a fierce, undeniable need to find the half-brother she never knew existed.
“Answer one question, open two more,” I thought, gripping the steering wheel.
We knew Brian had bought the child. We knew he had abandoned him with Cousin Martha. But why did Brian drain Dad’s retirement account yesterday? If he had been paying Martha for three years, why take a massive lump sum of sixty-eight thousand dollars and flee to Florida now?
We turned onto a gravel road lined with dead, skeletal oak trees. At the end of the road sat a decaying, two-story farmhouse.
Martha Vance’s property.
I killed the engine. The silence of the isolated farm was suffocating.
“Stay in the car, Dad,” I ordered softly.
Chloe and I got out. The wind howled across the overgrown fields. There was no car in the driveway, but a thin trail of smoke drifted from the stone chimney.
We walked up the rotting wooden steps to the front porch. I knocked heavily on the door.
No answer.
I knocked again, harder.
“Martha!” I yelled. “It’s Patty! Open the door!”
Nothing.
Chloe stepped past me and looked through the grimy front window. She squinted, bringing her face close to the glass.
“Patty,” Chloe whispered, her voice tight with panic. “Look.”
I pressed my face to the window.
The living room inside was a nightmare. Trash was piled waist-high. Empty liquor bottles littered the floor. But that wasn't what made my heart stop.
Against the far wall was a heavy wooden door leading to what looked like a pantry.
And securing that door was a massive, heavy iron padlock.
Exactly like the rusted padlock Chloe had thrown on the floor of Dad’s house.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
I didn't think. I grabbed a heavy, rusted iron planter sitting on the porch rail and smashed it directly through the glass pane of the front door.
I reached through the jagged glass, ignoring the sharp cut on my wrist, and unlocked the deadbolt.
We burst into the house. The stench of decay and stale alcohol was overwhelming.
“Leo!” I screamed, running toward the padlocked door. “Leo, are you in there?!”
Silence.
I grabbed the padlock, shaking it violently against the heavy iron latch. It wouldn't budge.
“Stand back,” Chloe said.
She had gone into the kitchen and returned with a heavy iron fire poker. With a ferocity I didn't expect from the polished woman, she swung the poker directly at the padlock hinge.
CLANG.
She swung again, putting her entire body weight behind it.
CRACK.
The old wood of the doorframe splintered. The latch tore free from the wall, taking chunks of drywall with it.
I ripped the door open.
The room was pitch black. The smell of urine and despair hit us like a physical blow.
Chloe fumbled for her phone, turning on the flashlight app. She shined the beam into the tiny, windowless room.
Sitting in the corner, curled into a tight ball on a filthy mattress, was a little boy.
He looked about nine years old, but he was painfully thin. His dark hair was matted, his clothes hanging off his fragile frame.
He didn't scream. He didn't cry. He just threw his hands over his eyes, blinded by the sudden light, trembling violently.
“Leo,” I sobbed, dropping to my knees on the filthy floor. “Oh, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I reached out slowly. He flinched away, pressing himself harder into the corner.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Chloe said softly, dropping the fire poker and kneeling beside me. Her icy demeanor was completely gone; tears were streaming down her face. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
I took off my cardigan and wrapped it gently around his shivering shoulders. I scooped him into my arms. He weighed almost nothing.
As I carried him out of the dark room into the living room, Chloe shined her light across the walls of the pantry.
“Patty,” Chloe said, her voice catching. “Look at the walls.”
I turned.
The drywall inside the tiny prison was covered in crayon drawings. Hundreds of them. Drawings of a house, a sun, and a family.
But tucked into the corner of one of the drawings, pinned to the wall with a rusty nail, was a thick, folded document.
Chloe reached in and pulled it out.
She unfolded it in the light of the living room.
It was a life insurance policy.
“The policy is on the boy,” Chloe whispered, her eyes wide with absolute horror. “The beneficiary is Brian. For five hundred thousand dollars.”
The reversal paralyzed me completely.
Brian hadn't paid Martha to keep the boy safe. He hadn't abandoned the child just because he didn't want the responsibility.
Brian had bought a life insurance policy on an undocumented, disposable child.
May you like
And yesterday, Brian drained Dad’s retirement account. Sixty-eight thousand dollars.
“He didn't take the money to run away,” I realized, my blood turning to ice water in my veins. “He took the money to pay Martha to finish the job.”
