I placed the box on the coffee table. Within minutes, all the kids were there, their gazes shifting between me and the box. “Gracie found something in the basement,” I told them.
“You all deserve to see this.”
“What on earth?” Mia exclaimed as I started unpacking the stacks of cash. “We had money in the basement?” Sam asked. “Mom and Dad hid it,” Grace announced.
You could’ve heard a pin drop. Then Aaron, the eldest, leaned forward and started counting the money. “It’s not just money,” I said, placing the last stack in front of Aaron.
“There are these, too.”
I pulled out a thin bundle of plastic sleeves. Inside those plastic sleeves were copies of each child’s birth certificate and Social Security card. And at the very bottom of the box, a map marked with various routes leading out of state.
“This proves that Mom and Dad didn’t die,” Grace declared. Everyone spoke at once. I let them have a few minutes, then I rapped my knuckles on the coffee table.
“Gracie, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “We have no proof to suggest your parents are alive, but what we do have definitely suggests they were planning something.”
“They were planning to leave,” Aaron said. “There’s over $40,000 here.
Enough to start over somewhere with us.”
“But why?” Mia asked. “What could’ve made them feel like running was the only option?”
“There has to be more.” Rebecca stood and turned to Grace. “Show us exactly where you found this.”
So we went down to the basement.
Soon, we were all searching through the old boxes and junk. It felt like hours had passed when Jonah called out, “Grandma?”
He was standing near the far wall, holding a folder. I took it from him and opened it under the bare pull-chain light.
A chill ran down my spine. “This is it. This is why they wanted to run.”
The folder was full of bills, statements, and final notices.
I had gone through everything after they died — or at least everything I had access to. None of this had been there. My son must’ve tried to bury it before they ran.
“They were in trouble,” I said. At the back of the folder was one handwritten sheet on lined paper. A bank account number and routing information.
And beneath it, in Laura’s neat writing: Don’t touch anything else. Aaron, who’d been looking at the documents over my shoulder, pointed at the page. “Does that mean there’s more money?”
“Only one way to find out,” I replied.
The next morning, I went to the bank by myself. “I’m here about my son,” I told the woman behind the desk. “He passed away ten years ago, but I recently found this account number in some of his things.
I just need to understand what it was.”
I placed a copy of Daniel’s death certificate and gave her the account number. She nodded and typed it in. Then she frowned at the screen.
I blinked. “I’m sorry — what does that mean?”
“It means there’s been recent activity.”
When I arrived home, all seven of them were waiting in the hallway. Aaron spoke first.
“Well?”
I shut the door and sat down in the kitchen. “The… the account is still active.”
“I told you they were alive!” Grace said. Aaron shook his head.
“No. No, there has to be another explanation.”
“There isn’t,” Grace said, and there was so much rage in her voice it startled me. He turned on her.
“You don’t know that.”
“Recent activity, Aaron! Who else could’ve been using that account? And why were only our documents in that box, not theirs?”
Aaron looked at me then, not angry now.
Desperate. “But if they took off, why didn’t they take us? Everything was prepared.”
“Something changed?” Mia whispered.
“Like they realized it would be too difficult to disappear with seven kids,” Jonah grumbled. Grace’s face hardened. “So, they left us.”
