In a box.” And I watched my mother’s face change, watched the outrage drain out of it and pure fear flood in to take its place, because she knew, now, that if I had the recording, I very likely had the rest of it too.

And I did.

Chapter 10 — The Grandfather’s Box

After the fire, my grandfather had suspected that something in the family’s tidy story did not add up.

He was a quiet, careful old man, and he loved me in a way no one else in that family ever quite managed, and before he died he did something that saved my life twelve years later.

He gave me a locked storage box.