All Good People Here(70)

Margot jerked upright, her hand frozen midair, her eyes on the door to the office. The noise had sounded like a footstep maybe, or a stumble. She stayed still, listening, but she didn’t hear anything else. Quietly, she slid off the chair and walked to the door, holding her breath as she pressed her ear against it. But all she could hear were the sounds of the TV. She was just being paranoid.

Back at her uncle’s desk, Margot continued going through the drawers, but the contents of each subsequent one were more banal than the last. There were records and receipts for all the work Luke had ever done on his car, down to every last oil change. And there was the same for the house—roof repairs and fixes for burst pipes. Among it all was a random assortment of loose papers—an old grocery list, a jury summons from 1999, a stack of letters Margot had sent him after her move from Wakarusa, written in her messy, preadolescent hand.

Finally, Margot made it to the last drawer, the tall one on the bottom right. But when she went to open it, it was stuck. She tugged it again, but it wouldn’t budge. Then she saw the little gold keyhole at the top and remembered the key. She hurriedly opened that first drawer again and plucked the key from inside.

Heart beating fast, Margot tried it in the drawer, where it twisted easily. But when she pulled it open, her stomach dropped. She didn’t know what she was expecting to find, but inside was nothing more than a filing system. And as she flicked through the folders, her disappointment grew; they were the financial records of Luke’s clients. It made sense, she supposed, to lock them away. She sank back into the enormous chair. She should have been relieved. She didn’t want her uncle to be harboring some guilty secret—of course she didn’t. But she wanted the truth, an explanation to why he’d been in that photo at January’s recital, and these financial documents weren’t it.

But then she noticed something she hadn’t earlier. There seemed to be a discrepancy between the depth of the drawer from the outside and the depth of the files within—a space of about three to four inches. She lurched upright and yanked the drawer all the way open. Then, forcing herself to move carefully, she removed the wire frame that held the files and pressed her hand against the wooden bottom of the drawer. She felt along the entire surface until, in one of the corners, she felt a slight give, then a pop. Her heart leapt into her throat. The wood panel was a false bottom.

But just before she could remove it, she heard another noise. It was the same thud as before, an errant footstep or an elbow against a wall, but this time it sounded as if it had come from outside.

She rushed over to the window and peered through the blinds. It must have been later than she realized because it was dark out now, the only source of light one weak bulb. Margot scanned every inch of her uncle’s small backyard, but no one was there. She craned her neck to listen, but heard nothing except the muffled sounds from the TV. Was it possible that Luke had been the source of the noise, that he was the one wandering around?

She walked to her bedroom door, creaked it open quietly, and slipped through. Tiptoeing down the hall, she paused outside the entrance to the living room and leaned her head around the corner. But Luke hadn’t moved. He sat on the couch, facing the TV. On the screen now, the female lions were hunting, circling their prey methodically. Margot glanced around the rest of the room and the connected kitchen, but nothing looked out of the ordinary, nothing amiss. And the only sound she could hear was the voice of the documentary’s narrator as he explained that the wildebeest had no chance against the surrounding pride. Margot turned and headed back to her room.

Locking the door behind her, she heaved a sigh. She felt absurd. There was nothing sinister going on in the house. Her uncle wasn’t on to her being on to him. And, for that matter, maybe there was nothing even for her to be on to him about. Maybe there was a completely innocuous reason for why he’d been at January’s recital that night. It was Elliott Wallace she needed to focus on right now, not her uncle. But then Luke’s words flashed in her mind. She’s been asking a lot about January. I’m afraid she’ll find out what really happened. Margot rubbed her hands down her face. Her brain felt scrambled.

Back at her uncle’s desk, she sank into the chair, then leaned forward to remove the false bottom of the drawer. Maybe she should be focusing her efforts on Wallace, but first, she needed to check this off the list. Luke had gone through some lengths to keep whatever was in this drawer hidden. Margot placed the wooden panel on the carpeted floor by her feet then turned her attention to the contents beneath, her breath catching in her throat.

For a moment, she couldn’t move. All she could do was stare, her heartbeat fast and hard. Then, with a trembling hand, she reached down, pulled out the stack of folded papers, and set them gingerly in her lap.

Tears pricked her eyes as she flipped through the cheaply made programs. Each one had the same clip art on the cover: a tutued ballerina, her arms in a graceful circle over her head. Above was an arch of words: Alicia’s Dance Academy presents…and below the dancer was the title of each particular show: Spring Review ’94, Autumn Spotlight ’93. Inside each was January’s name.

Margot squeezed her eyes shut. Her uncle, her favorite person in the world, was a liar—and maybe also something far worse. What explanation could he have for going to the recitals of a little girl he claimed he never knew? And why, for over twenty-five years, had he kept the programs hidden and locked away?