Inside the folder was a copy of the locksmith’s invoice, along with a handwritten note from my mother listing every lock in the house. At the bottom she had written that if my brother ever came to the house after her death, I was not to let him inside until I had read everything in the folder. I looked at my brother and asked what he knew about it. He said almost nothing, only that Mom had called him shortly before she died and told him there were things about the house that I had never been told.
I asked him about the key that didn’t work, and he admitted it had belonged to our father. He said he found it years ago in an old desk and had kept it without knowing what it opened. When he tried it on the front door that morning, it didn’t fit the new lock. Then he handed me another document from the folder, and I realized Mom hadn’t changed the locks because she was worried about someone breaking in. She had changed them because someone had already been getting into the house.
The document was an old property record from the year our father disappeared. There was a name on it that neither of us recognized, and beside the name was a note in Mom’s handwriting saying that the person had been inside our house before. My brother finally admitted that Mom had told him something else during their last conversation: she said there was a room in the house where our father had kept something he never wanted either of us to find. She had apparently spent years making sure nobody could access it without her knowing.
Then I noticed something I’d never paid attention to before. The locksmith’s invoice listed one additional lock that wasn’t on Mom’s handwritten list. It had been installed on a door in the basement, but our basement had no locked door. My brother and I went downstairs together, and behind an old shelving unit we found a narrow wooden door covered by fresh paint. The key he’d brought didn’t fit the new lock, but when I looked at the invoice again, I saw the installation date was only four days before Mom died. My brother looked at me and said, “She didn’t change the locks to keep me out. She changed them because she knew someone was coming back.”
