Chapter 8

Gina's hand stopped inside her purse.

Dot stood beside the office door.

"What didn't you throw away?" Dani asked.

Dot looked at Sal.

Then Ruth.

"Renata's things."

Dani's fingers slipped from her coat pocket.

"You still have them?"

"Downstairs."

Gina snapped the purse shut.

"The basement was cleared years ago."

"Part of it."

"We put new plumbing through there."

"Not through the old staff alcove."

Sal stepped closer.

"Dot."

She held up one hand.

"Let me finish before I lose my nerve."

He stopped.

Dot pulled out the chair Gina had left.

She sat on its edge.

"The day Renata was sent home, Gina gave an order."

"Empty her locker."

"Get rid of everything."

Gina spoke from the window.

"Abandoned property."

"She came back for it," Dot said.

"You just heard me say that."

Dani sat beside her.

"Did you empty it?"

"No."

"Why?"

Dot stared at her folded tissue.

"Because she was my friend."

Dani waited.

Dot raised her eyes.

"And because saving a locker was easier than standing up to anyone."

Sal lowered his head.

Dot kept speaking.

"The new staff room opened that spring."

"The old lockers stayed bolted downstairs."

"Storage shelves went in front of them."

Ruth asked who had keys.

"Management, when that room was used."

"I kept the old spare set."

"Where?"

"In my locked supply box."

Gina turned from the window.

"So anything in there could be yours."

Dot nodded.

"It could."

Dani looked sharply at her.

Dot met her eyes.

"I'm not going to claim nobody could reach it."

"Renata's locker stayed shut."

"I didn't stand guard for twenty-four years."

Ruth wrote that down.

"That's the right distinction."

Sal rubbed a hand along his jaw.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Dot looked at him for a long moment.

"You believed her before Renata finished talking."

He did not answer.

Dani's voice stayed low.

"Why didn't you find my mother?"

Dot's tissue came apart between her fingers.

"I should have."

"She died in 2013."

"I know that now."

"She was thirty-seven."

Dot pressed the torn tissue to her mouth.

Dani watched her.

Then she looked down at the photograph.

Ruth placed the new copy beside it.

Renata smiled from both pages.

Dot lowered her hand.

"I don't expect this to fix it."

Dani touched the copied photograph.

"Tell me what was in the locker."

"Work shoes."

"A sweater, probably."

"A box of her father's things."

"And an envelope."

Gina's heel moved against the rug.

Ruth looked up.

"What envelope?"

"Thick cream paper."

"Her name was on the front."

"Did you see her put it there?"

"Yes."

Dot leaned forward.

"It was the morning the medallion disappeared."

"She came downstairs from this office."

"She said she'd found something from her father."

Dani looked at the file on the desk.

"After he died?"

"He'd been gone almost two years."

"Did she open it?"

"Not while I was there."

"Why not?"

"She put her things away."

"Then Gina called her upstairs."

Gina shook her head.

"You don't know where that envelope came from."

Dot looked directly at her.

"I know what Renata told me."

"What?"

"That she'd found her father's handwriting in your desk."

Ruth's pen stopped.

Sal looked at the desk.

Gina spread her hands.

"I kept all kinds of business mail."

Dani stood.

Ruth rose with her.

"Let's document what we find."

"No conclusions before we see it."

Gina moved toward the door.

Sal stepped aside instead of blocking her.

She stopped anyway.

Dani faced Dot.

"You can open the locker?"

"If the lock still works."

Dot reached beneath her apron for her supply-box key.

"Then take me to it," Dani said.