Chapter 10 - THE KEY INSIDE GERALD
I didn't understand.
“My father hid evidence?”
Greg nodded.
“Somewhere nobody would think to look.”
I stared.
Then suddenly remembered something.
Gerald.
The plastic dinosaur.
Our father had given it to Toby shortly before he died.
Toby had been a baby.
He'd kept it through every hospital stay.
Every move.
Every terrible year.
I looked at Dante.
“Gerald.”
His expression changed.
“What?”
“The dinosaur.”
We returned to the hospital immediately.
Toby was asleep.
Gerald rested beside his pillow.
I picked it up carefully.
The toy was old.
Green plastic.
One missing eye.
A small crack beneath its tail.
Dante examined it.
Then found a tiny screw beneath the base.
He looked at me.
“May I?”
I nodded.
He opened the compartment.
Inside was a miniature memory card wrapped in plastic.
I stared.
For nine years, the evidence my father died protecting had been sitting beside my little brother's hospital bed.
Dante looked at the card.
Then at me.
“Elena.”
My eyes filled.
“What?”
“Your father was trying to protect you.”
I began crying.
Dante stepped closer.
Then stopped.
“Can I hold you?”
I looked at him.
For a moment, I remembered everything.
His father's crimes.
The lies.
The danger.
But I also remembered him sitting beside me outside the operating room.
Paying for Toby's surgery without demanding anything.
Protecting me from Greg.
And telling me the truth even when it implicated his own family.
I nodded.
Dante wrapped his arms around me.
May you like
I cried against his chest.
And for the first time in nine years, I felt that my father's death might finally mean something more than loss.
