THE NIGHT YOUR 8-YEAR-OLD SISTER CLIMBED INTO YOUR FATHER’S COFFIN… SHE EXPOSED A SECRET NO ADULT WAS READY TO HEAR

Your father had rented one on the edge of town to keep overflow equipment from the shop. You had been there only once, years ago. Rebecca said he kept old memorabilia there too, including a Christmas box with a snow globe from your grandparents.

Within ten minutes you had a plan that felt like a bad movie and a worse idea. Rebecca would drive Lily in her car to the grocery store across town, acting normal. You would bike through the alleyways to the self-storage facility with the key from your father’s letter. If Mercer’s people were watching the house, they would likely follow the adult they perceived as important. Once you had whatever was in the unit, you would meet Rebecca and Lily at St. Bartholomew’s old cemetery where your father used to bring flowers to your grandparents. It was quiet, half-forgotten, and tucked behind a line of cedar trees.

“You’re sixteen,” Rebecca said, hating the plan even while she repeated it. “You should not be doing this.”

“Dad wrote to me, not to you.”

Her eyes flashed. “He wrote to both of us in different ways.”

That shut you up.

Before leaving, Lily ran upstairs and returned with her little pink backpack. She stuffed the funeral program inside, along with crackers, a flashlight, and a stuffed rabbit missing one eye.

“What are you doing?” you asked.

“In case we have to hide,” she said simply.

No one laughed.

You left through the back fence with your father’s letter tucked under your shirt and the storage key inside your sock. The morning air cut your lungs. Every passing car sounded personal. You kept expecting the black SUV to swing around the corner, but it never did.

The storage facility sat beyond the railroad tracks, surrounded by chain-link fence and faded advertisements for first month free. Unit C-14 was near the back, out of sight from the office. Your hands shook so hard you dropped the key twice before getting it into the lock.

The metal door rattled upward.

Inside sat boxes, tool chests, a lawn mower with two flat tires, Christmas tubs, and your father’s old fishing rods. Dust floated in the slanted light. For one terrible second, it looked like Lily had been wrong.

Then you smelled it.

Pennies.

Not exactly. Blood has that metallic smell people compare to pennies because the mind prefers coins to flesh. But there was no blood. There was only damp concrete and something chemical and sharp.

You searched.

Snow globe. Christmas box. Under it, taped to the bottom, a second flash drive and a prepaid phone.