Page 53 of Lightning in a Mason Jar
She stood in the middle of the room, pivoting for inspiration until her eyes landed on Skeeter nosing his dog bed, pawing and circling as he always did before napping. Maybe ...
Bailey Rae rushed across the room and shooed Skeeter away. She lifted the cushion to unzip the liner, then stopped cold. The wood flooring had a discolored section about twenty by twenty inches. Dropping to her knees, she ran her fingers along the edges until finding a groove.
A tiny trap door popped open. A small fire safe rested inside the cubby, the kind with a keypad. She groaned in frustration as she lifted the small safe and punched in the same code as the security system. Then her birthday. Winnie’s. Russell’s. Still nothing.
The safe wasn’t necessarily a strange thing. But taken in context with all this cash lying around, she had questions.
She wasn’t sure why those answers should matter so much. Winnie was gone, Russell too. If the riddles had been important, Winnie would have made mention of the money in her will, wouldn’t she? Or maybe just the opposite. That the secrets were too big to contain in one document.
She had only one way to find out. First thing tomorrow, she needed to go straight to the nearest reliable sources.
Thea and June.
During her early months in Bent Oak as a child, Bailey Rae had assumed Libby, June, and Thea were somehow related to Winnie. They went just about everywhere together, ate meals at each other’s homes at least a couple of times a week. They’d felt like family. Not the family Bailey Rae had known for her first six years, but the type she thought only existed in books or on television.
And family could drop in unannounced. By morning, frazzled and frustrated, she’d decided to start with Thea.
With the rising sun dappling shadows through the tunnel of oak branches, she steered her truck along the lengthy driveway. A level road with no potholes, the drive curved until the sprawling home came into view—with Libby’s minivan parked in front, which meant June or Keith must be there as well.
At least three times the size of the cabin, Thea’s two-story brick house sported wraparound porches and balconies. A stately home befitting the heir to the paper mill, Bent Oak’s main source of employment. Thea also lived on the river, but with a cleared lot and a dock with a pontoon boat on a lift.
The spread offered quite the contrast to June’s condominium on the refurbished second floor above a law office. And it seemed a world away from Libby’s modular home on an acre of land deeded over to her by Russell. These ladies took care of each other, that much Bailey Rae knew from the earliest of her days in Bent Oak. She just hoped they would see her as a proxy for Winnie and pry open the vault to their secrets.
Literally and figuratively. Bailey Rae rested a clenched hand on the small safe perched on the passenger side of the bench seat. The knot in her stomach grew tighter as she drew closer to answers.
Stopping beside Libby’s minivan, Bailey Rae threw the truck into park and stepped out in the summer morning, eighty degrees and climbing.
From the porch, Thea waved her over, a wide-brimmed hat shading her face. “Hey there. What perfect timing for you to stop by. Come join us for sweet tea and hummingbird cake.”
Bailey Rae hefted the small safe from the passenger seat and kicked the door closed behind her. She followed the paver stones, the walkway lined with hostas and hydrangeas. Thea had the prettiest yard in all of Bent Oak yet refused to join the garden club, in spite of her mother-in-law’s repeated invitations over the years.
The women had gathered in a far corner of the porch at a wrought iron table and chairs, ceiling fans swooping overhead. The friends had congregated there so often that once Libby’s mobility waned, Thea’s husband had installed a ramp along the side of the porch.
Bailey Rae plunked the mini-safe onto the wrought iron table beside a four-layer hummingbird cake. “Look what I found in the floor of Winnie’s cabin. Any idea of the combination or what she’s hiding inside?”
Thea glanced up from pouring tea into cut-crystal glasses full of ice. “In the floor of Winnie’s cabin? Maybe that’s from Annette or Russell’s day.”
Bailey Rae dropped into a chair. “It’s not dusty—and it wasn’t when I found it either.”
June sliced through the cake with undue concentration, sliding a piece onto each of the gold-rimmed plates. “That’s quite a mystery.”
For once, Libby had nothing to say. She simply plucked at her overlong lemon T-shirt. Clothes with buttons were becoming a thing of the past since she’d started to undress in the middle of the grocery store shortly after Winnie had died. The doctor had indicated disrobing at inappropriate times sometimes happened to a person with dementia, especially during times of stress.
June passed a ball of cornflower-blue yarn and a crochet needle to Libby. “Honey, here’s the baby blanket you’ve been working on for Thea’s new grandson.”
Bailey Rae waited through the distribution of plates and filling of drinks, all in silence. Was it her imagination or were they avoiding her eyes? “So that’s it? Nobody’s going to say anything else about the safe?”
Thea met her gaze for the first time. “What do you think the safe contains?”
“Secrets.” The word fell out of her mouth as she sat forward, determined to find answers. “I also found thousands of dollars in cash stashed all over the cabin in the strangest places. I get the feeling there’s some kind of mystery in Winnie’s past. Maybe it’s none of my business, but Winnie was all I had in the world, and I thought—I know—I was important to her.”
Thea reached to clasp her hand, the warmth of her filtering through her lightweight glove. “You were the child Winnie never had. She loved you. Anything she kept from you came out of a need to protect you.”
Except Bailey Rae wasn’t a child any longer. “What might I find in the safe if I opened it?” Frustration bubbled up and out. “You can tell me now or wait around for Libby to spill the beans later down the road. I’d really rather hear it from you.”
June gestured toward Libby engrossed in her crocheting. “Bailey Rae’s right about that. Since we’re all alone here, maybe this is the right time to give her the basics.”
That last word—basics—hinted at a pared-down accounting when Bailey Rae wanted the full scoop. But she would wrangle for more along the way. At least this was a start.
