Ruth stared at them.
“So this isn’t about stealing my house.”
Mason shook his head.
“They’re trying to bury something underneath it.”
Then Danny’s voice came from upstairs.
“Guys?”
No one answered immediately.
“Guys!”
They ran.
Danny stood inside Henry’s office beside an open filing cabinet.
He held an old envelope.
“What?”
“I found something behind the drawer.”
Inside was a key.
Small.
Brass.
A strip of masking tape was wrapped around it.
Written in faded ink were three words:
FOR TOMMY HART.
Mason stopped breathing.
Ruth stared.
“Tommy?”
Mason’s face had gone strangely blank.
Eli noticed.
“Mason.”
Ruth looked at him.
“You asked me about Tommy earlier.”
Mason didn’t answer.
“Mason?”
He walked toward the photograph of Samuel and Tommy Hart.
The laughing teenage boys.
The motorcycle.
The homemade garage sign.
Then Mason pulled out his wallet.
From behind his driver’s license, he removed an old photograph worn nearly white along its folds.
He placed it beside Ruth’s.
Same boy.
Older.
But unmistakable.
Ruth looked from one picture to the other.
“What is this?”
Mason swallowed.
“Thomas Hart was my father.”
Ruth’s hand flew to her mouth.
Thomas Hart had rarely spoken about his childhood.
He had died twelve years earlier from pancreatic cancer.
Mason knew he’d grown up somewhere in Missouri.
He knew he’d loved motorcycles.
He knew his father’s closest friend had died young.
But he had never known the friend’s name.
“My father carried this picture for forty years,” Mason said.
Ruth lowered herself into a chair.
“Oh, my God.”
“He told me once there had been two of them.”
She began crying.
“Samuel and Tommy.”
Mason nodded.
“After Samuel died, my father left town.”
“I know.”
“He said he couldn’t stay.”
Ruth covered her face.
“He came to the funeral.”
Mason’s eyes closed briefly.
“He never told me.”
“He blamed himself.”
“For what?”
Ruth hesitated.
“Your father was riding with Samuel the night he died.”
Mason’s eyes opened.
“What?”
Ruth’s voice trembled.
“The police report said Samuel was alone. But Henry knew Tommy had been there.”
Mason’s pulse seemed to move through his entire body.
“Why wasn’t he in the report?”
“Because Tommy disappeared for two days. When he finally came to Henry, he was terrified.”
“What did he see?”
Ruth shook her head.
“I don’t know. Henry wouldn’t tell me.”
Mason looked at the key.
“For Tommy Hart.”
Noah spoke quietly.
“Whatever Henry hid, he meant Mason’s father to find it.”
Danny frowned.
“But he never did.”
Mason stared at the brass key.
“Maybe he never knew it existed.”
They searched the office.
Desk drawers.
Closet.
Attic.
Nothing fit.
At last Ruth whispered, “The barn.”
Behind the old red barn stood Henry’s workshop.
The lock opened with the brass key.
Inside, dust lay thick over hand tools, shelves, jars of screws, and an old workbench.
Mason moved slowly.
He could almost imagine his father here at seventeen.
Laughing with Samuel.
Building motorcycles.
Planning futures neither of them got to have.
Ruth touched a battered red toolbox.
“Henry never came in here after Samuel died.”
Mason examined the walls.
Nothing.
Then Danny knelt beside the workbench.
“This board is newer than the others.”
He tapped the floor.
Hollow.
Noah fetched a crowbar.
Beneath the plank was a metal box.
