Behind the drywall was a narrow opening that hadn’t been part of the original room. I could see old wooden framing around it, and the wood looked much older than the renovation itself. Inside was a shallow compartment with a metal box sitting on the floor. There was no lock, no label, and no reason for my contractor to have built anything around it. I pulled the box out and found it was heavier than it looked, with several layers of newspaper wrapped around whatever was inside.
The newspapers were dated from different years, going back almost thirty years. Beneath them were envelopes, photographs, and a small ledger with my mother’s handwriting on the first few pages. I sat down on the floor because I suddenly recognized the dates. They were the same years my mother had told me she was having financial problems, even though I’d never understood where the money had gone. Several entries had amounts beside them, followed by the same initials over and over again.
I called my contractor’s number again, and this time his wife answered. I told her I’d found something behind the wall and asked whether he knew what was there. She was silent for so long that I thought we’d been disconnected. Then she said he had told her not to let me open that wall unless he was there. I asked why, and she said he had discovered the compartment during demolition and had spent two days trying to figure out what it was before finishing the drywall around it. She said he had mailed me the lien release because he wanted nothing more to do with the house.
I opened the ledger to the last page, and there was a single entry written in my mother’s handwriting. It was dated three days before she died. Beneath the date was the amount I’d paid my contractor for the renovation, followed by a sentence that made no sense until I looked at the envelopes beside it. “If anyone ever finds this, don’t let them tell you your father was the one who put it here.”
