Page 57 of Shake the Habit

Sir didn’t argue with that, and I knew he loved Caleb a lot. He loved me, too, so he took his spot near my feet as I uncovered the desk. The front door to the farmhouse was open but, as usual, I couldn’t hear anything inside there, and I hoped that Marc was doing ok in the attic and that he had convinced the crew to stay.

The desk was as messy and full as I remembered. I started with the big drawers in the front, and I divided everything into the boxes: shred, recycle, keep, and trash. Out of all the crap from the drawers, I only put her bank statements in the “keep” box in case Caleb might need them, and I got rid of everything else. Next, I yanked up the slatted top, which still didn’t slide well. I tossed out Lara-Lee’s piles of reminder notes with her cramped handwriting and the old tape on the top, and I added the various bills and invoices to the shred box. Finally, I emptied the little drawers and slots at the back, angrily throwing her candy wrappers into the trash when I came across them.

“That was so mean of you, Lara-Lee,” I muttered under my breath. I thought that Sir heard me, because he picked up his head, but then I realized he’d heard my cousin’s approach instead.

“I don’t know what got into those guys,” Marc said as he stepped out of the house. “They’re grown men and they were acting like kids after hearing a ghost story.”

“They did seem scared,” I agreed, and dropped another load of crap into my sorting boxes.

“There’s not one damn thing up there except for dust and rodent droppings, so I think that Caleb was right about the mice.”

“Sir hears the mice too, and he barks at them.” He huffed now, showing off, and Mark scratched his head. “I bet they ran wild in the barn. The first time we were here, he was barking at that animal pen.”

“What pen? They never kept animals in the barn.”

“I mean the stall,” I explained. “The little room on the right side in the back, where it was so dark.”

“That was the office,” he told me. “That’s where we got this.” He thumped the top of the desk and because it wasn’t well-balanced on its three intact legs, it tilted and almost fell. “Whoa, there! I’ll hold it up and you put the rock back under it.” I did and it was steadier. “Caleb’s mother worked in the barn with a kerosene lamp,” he continued as I stood and brushed off my knees. “There was no electricity until we ran it during the remodel.”

“She was sitting in the dark and the cold,” I noted, and he grimaced.

“What a weird woman. Damn!”

We had both jumped, because the wind had blown the front door shut again.

“I’ll tell you what, I don’t like being in this house either,” my cousin admitted. “Don’t let the framers in on that, though.”

“I won’t. Stay for another minute and help me open this drawer.” The little one at the back of the desk, which had been hidden behind all her miscellaneous trash and papers, remained stuck.

But it was no match for Marc’s knife or his intransigence. That was such a good word, but it made me sad when I thought of it. I’d looked up all those synonyms for “stubborn” while I’d mediated an argument between him and Taygen. I was so sorry how things had ended for them—or maybe, it didn’t have to be the end. I still had hope.

Anyway, he had to cuss a lot and he almost cut off his finger, but he didn’t quit and finally, the drawer flew open. It literally flew because he was pulling on it hard, and it landed on Sir who then barked his head off.

“Oh, my Lord! He’s hurt!” I said, going to my knees again. “Tell me what’s wrong, Sir!”

That was when Caleb arrived, because he was picking us up here so we could ride home together. “What happened?” he called as he got out, and he moved fast to join us. As usual, he stayed calm and level-headed, and we quickly figured out that Sir was fine, just a little mad that he’d been disturbed. Marc’s hands were still intact and so was his knife blade, and that was all good. In fact, the only thing that had really suffered was the desk drawer.

“Don’t worry about it,” Caleb told me as I picked up the pieces and apologized. The front, back, and two sides had come off. “What was in there?”

“I think it was empty,” I answered, but we looked around the porch in case anything had flung out. Then I tried to put the drawer back together and when I flipped it over, I saw something funny. “This is why it was stuck,” I said.I showed them the underside of the bottom piece, where someone had used yellowed tape to attach a blue cardboard envelope. It seemed to be the same old tape that Lara-Lee Woodson had also used to hang all her to-do notes.

Caleb took the broken drawer from me, pulled off the envelope, and unsnapped the little metal fastener that held it closed. “This looks like a safety deposit key,” he said as it slid out into his palm.

“It must be your mom’s,” I told him. “What did she keep in her safety deposit box?”

“I have no idea.”

Marc took the key. “It only has the name of the company that cut it, not the bank, but there’s a number here. That’s probably the number of the box.” He handed it back.

“This is exciting,” I pointed out. “It’s a mystery.”

Caleb smiled in his usual way of hiding the expression behind his fist. “Don’t get too excited,” he warned. “There was nothing about this in her will, so it’s probably empty.”

“Kayleigh always wanted to play Scooby Doo,” Marc informed him, and that was true. My cousin had consistently claimed the role of Fred for himself. Aria (the redhead) had been Daphne, and Cassidy (the smart one) had been Velma. We’d used a stuffed animal for the dog and I’d been stuck as Shaggy.

Caleb, with his unusual childhood, wasn’t familiar with the cartoon, so we spent a while explaining and then acting out some famous scenes using Sir as the dog detective. He was great and it was more fun than I’d ever had at the old farmhouse.

In the truck on the way home, though, I brought up the old key again. “She probably kept the box at the same place where she did the rest of her banking,” I mentioned.

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