Little Broken Things

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  “We can give it a whirl and see what happens.”

  We gave it a whirl.

  And then another.

  Around twenty whirls later, Aunt Laura said, “I’m all out of ideas, kiddo. I think we need some backup.”

  She left the room and called for reinforcements and I attempted to move the safe from its resting place. It didn’t budge. The safe itself appeared to be inexpensive, the kind that wouldn’t take much effort to crack it open, combination or not.

  While I waited, I moseyed through the rest of the room, checking in all the nooks and crannies, looking for hidey-holes, anywhere a young woman might stash something she wanted to keep private. I found nothing of note until I sat on an orange retro-style orange chair in the corner of the room and felt something move beneath it. I stood, lifted the cushion, and found nothing. I tipped the chair on its side and noticed a zippered compartment where I assumed the wooden feet of the chair had been stored prior to it being assembled. I unzipped the compartment and a book fell out.

  Clever girl.

  She hid things like I did.

  The book turned out to be a journal. I thumbed through it, stopping to read a few short entries here and there. For the most part, it was basic stuff. Nothing too exciting or revealing. On some of the pages, beneath each entry, Olivia had sketched hearts, flowers, and butterflies, among other things.

  Aunt Laura walked back into the room with Barb in tow. I held the journal up in front of them. “I found this in the zippered compartment beneath this chair. Any idea why Olivia would go to the trouble of hiding it?”

  Embarrassed, Barb’s face flushed. “I … yes. I may know the reason why. Olivia caught me snooping around in her room once. I thought she wasn’t home, and I was … well, I was reading her journal. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right—it wasn’t a proud mom moment, but there we are. I made her a promise I’d never look through it again, and I kept my promise, though I expect she still worried it might happen again.”

  Had something happened that caused Barb to flip through Olivia’s journal?

  Had she been suspicious about a part of her daughter’s life?

  I was about to find out.

  I hoped.

  “Was there a reason you decided to look through her journal?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t one reason in particular. Olivia was a guarded, private person. She wasn’t big on expressing her feelings. In high school, she started keeping a journal. I thought if I read it, maybe I’d get to know more about what mattered to her.”

  “What did you learn by reading her journal?” I asked.

  “I didn’t. What I mean to say is, I never got the chance. Olivia busted me a minute or two after I opened it.”

  I resumed thumbing through the rest of the journal and stopped. Toward the end, page after page had been ripped out. I turned the journal around, sharing my discovery with Aunt Laura and Barb.

  Barb’s eyes widened. “What in the world? Why would she …”

  Realization came seconds later.

  Perhaps they’d been torn out because Olivia worried her mother would read her journal again.

  “If Olivia ripped some of the pages out, she must have decided whatever she wrote … she couldn’t risk anyone else seeing it.”

  I flipped through the book once more. There were no dates anywhere, just entries, making it impossible to know when the pages had been torn away.

  Chad poked his head inside the room and said, “I hear you need Olivia’s safe opened.”

  “You heard right,” I said. “Do you know the password?”

  “I don’t, but my son has the same type of safe in his room. We busted it open several months ago after he forgot the combination and needed to get into it.” Chad lifted the hammer in his hand. “It isn’t hard.”

  “I didn’t know you had a son,” I said.

  Barb nodded. “David. He’s in college. What I mean to say is he was in college. He’s headed home now. Should be here this evening.”

  “Why did Olivia and David have a safe in the first place?”

  “To keep expensive items, like David’s thousand-dollar camera, and the diamond earrings we bought Olivia at graduation, well ... safe,” Chad said with a shrug. “We bought them for the kids a few years ago.”

  Chad approached the closet and knelt down. He wrenched the hammer’s claw into a small gap in the side of the lock and pulled back. Nothing happened. He tried once more and then a third time, followed by shouting a slew of swear words. “I don’t get it. It wasn’t this hard last time.”

  Barb placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. We’ll get it open, one way or another.”

  “Mind if I give it a go?” I asked.

  “I was going to grab Stuart before he leaves, but sure. Why not?”

  He offered me the hammer, and I squatted in front of the safe. Chad had done a good job at bending the metal back. All it needed was a bit more force. I removed my shoes, braced my feet against the back of the wall, put the hammer into position, and leaned back, using all the muscle I could muster. It took four tries, and then the door popped open.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Chad said. “You’re a lot tougher than I thought.”

  I swung the safe’s door open and reached inside, pulling out the contents of the safe and spreading them out on the bed. Among the items were several pieces of jewelry stowed in a wooden box shaped like a daisy, a passport, a birth certificate, another journal, and a Ziploc baggie containing photos.

  I picked up the journal, surprised to find it wasn’t a journal at all. It was a book of poetry.

  Barb recognized it and said, “I haven’t seen that for a few years now. When Olivia was in high school, she took a creative writing class for a few years.”

  “Have you read any of the poems in this book?”

  “Olivia shared a few of them with us when she first started the class,” Barb said. “They were all about nature and life … that type of thing.”

  “I’ll need to take the poetry book and the journal with me,” I said.

  Barb frowned, no doubt because she wanted the chance to go through both books before I removed them from the house.

  “They need to be entered into evidence,” I said. “If I come across anything you need to know about, I’ll tell you. Okay?”

  A reluctant Barb nodded.

  I set the books on the dresser and shifted my focus to the plastic baggie. I opened it, pulled the photos out, and examined them. The first photos in the stack were of Olivia and Casper, similar to the ones I’d seen pinned to the cork board.

  Why had Olivia found it necessary to keep them in a safe?

  I flipped through a few more photos and found my answer.

  Behind the innocent-looking pictures, six additional photos had been torn in half, and the fact they’d been ripped wasn’t even the worst part. In every photo, an unidentified woman’s face had been scratched out by a hard object, like a nickel on a used lottery ticket.

  Aunt Laura, Barb, and Chad all stood there, examining them with me, with a look of shock on their faces.

  “Looks like there was someone your daughter didn’t like,” I said. “Anyone recognize the girl in these photos?”

  By recognize, I meant best guess because all we could make of the girl was her long, brown hair and the fact she was muscular with a slender frame.

  “I have no idea who she is,” Barb said. “She’s not one of Olivia’s close friends. Abigail has red hair, and Roxie has more of a stocky build and short hair that’s shaved on one side.”

  Barb ran through the names of a few other acquaintances of Olivia and came up short. “I have no idea who the young woman is … or why my daughter would do such a thing to another woman’s face.”

  “I don’t either,” Chad said. “My daughter was kindhearted and thoughtful. I don’t know what to say.”

  I did.

  One part of Olivia’s character had become clear to me. No matter how kind and t
houghtful she may have been, there was a part of Olivia’s true nature no one seemed to know about.

  Chapter 8

  “I don’t like red wine,” I said.

  Giovanni stared at me for a moment with a look of confusion on his face. “All right. What do you like?”

  “I’m sorry. Let me start over, and I’ll explain. This new case I’m working on has me thinking a lot about how people communicate with each other … what we say to one another, what we don’t say.”

  He crossed one leg over the other and leaned back, taking in my words. “I assume this has something to do with the comment you just made about your distaste for red wine.”

  “It’s this case I’m working on. The victim, Olivia Spencer, is my Aunt Laura’s goddaughter. The more I get to know who Olivia was, the real Olivia, the more I wonder if anyone knew her at all. It seems I’ve just scratched the surface on who she is. I get the feeling part of her was who everyone believed she was, and the other part was a person far more interested in pleasing others than being true to herself.”

  Giovanni steepled his fingers and said, “Many people choose to live their lives in an insulated bubble instead of showing people who they are. For some, it’s much easier to be a person they’re not than the person they are. However, I don’t see you as one of those people.”

  “Most of the time, I’m not one of those people. I like red wine. I don’t love it though. You do. When I’m here, at your place, I’ll drink red wine with you, but I’d prefer something with bubbles—Prosecco or a sparkling rosé.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”

  Good question.

  Why hadn’t I?

  What was different about him than all the others in my life?

  “With everyone else, I speak my mind, even when I shouldn’t,” I said. “It’s different with you. Sometimes I think I do things to please you even though you’ve always accepted me for who I am, flaws and all.”

  “I will always accept you for who you are. I never want you to feel the need to hide anything from me.”

  “Right, so … I’ve been thinking about it a lot today, and I want us to be honest with each other, even if we agree to disagree at times. I should have said something about the wine. It’s lame. I mean, who cares whether I like red or prefer something else, right?”

  He held out his hand. “I believe I have an easy solution, something to ease your mind. Come with me.”

  I slid my hand into his and stood. Luka squinted at both of us from his dog bed across the room and then closed his eyes, too tired to bother with where we were going and why. Giovanni led me to the walk-in pantry in the kitchen, and I noticed a recent addition had been added since the last time I’d been there. The kitchen now contained a wine fridge.

  “When did this get put in?” I asked.

  “I ordered it before I headed out of town. When it arrived, Peppe picked it up. He also grabbed a selection of bottles I requested and set the fridge up so it would be ready when I returned to Cambria.”

  Peppe had worked for Giovanni’s family in various capacities for decades. It seemed delivery and installation had just been added to his extensive resume. I approached the fridge and peered through the glass door. The shelves inside were lined with a variety of sparkling wine, including the prosecco and rosé I’d just mentioned.

  “I didn’t think you drank anything other than red,” I said.

  “They’re not for me. They’re for you.”

  I glanced over at him. “How did you know when I never said anything”

  “Remember the last night we shared in your Airstream, the night before I headed back to New York?”

  I did.

  It was a night I still thought about, even now. After sharing some sweet sentiments, he said, “I love …” And then he paused just long enough for a bit of awkwardness to fill the air before rephrasing with, “I love every moment we’re together.”

  Since then, I’d questioned whether loving every moment we were together was what he’d meant to say. For all the times I’d lacked control over what came out of my mouth, “I love you” was one phrase I had no problem withholding until the time was right.

  “It was a good night,” I said.

  “When you asked me to grab the cheese platter out of the fridge before we started the movie, I noticed a couple of bottles of Prosecco next to the orange juice and a bottle of rosé turned on its side on a shelf. I realized every time I’d come to your place, I brought a bottle of red wine, thinking you still liked it because it was what we drank when we had dinner together in college, back when we thought sharing a glass of red wine together made us fancy.”

  I flashed back to one night in particular and laughed. “I remember feeling so grown up when we drank red wine, like we were ten years older than we were.”

  “When I noticed you drink lighter wines now, I decided to buy the wine fridge as a surprise.” He leaned in, planting a kiss on my lips. “Surprise.”

  Overwhelmed with the thoughtful gesture, I threw my arms around him. “Thank you for paying attention. Since we’ve been together, I feel like I’ve been working on case after case, always focusing on solving it instead of focusing on us.”

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way. Your drive is one of the things I admire about you most.”

  “I don’t know what to say except thank you for accepting me as I am.”

  He raised a brow. “You are right, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “I should have asked you if you drank something other than red these days, and I didn’t.” He winked. “You have plenty of options when you’re at my place now.”

  I removed a bottle from the fridge, then we grabbed a couple of glasses and headed outside.

  One glass in, I spoke my truth. “I want you to know I’m still thinking about the suggestion you made about moving in together. How long until the house closes and you move into the new place?”

  “Realtor said it should take about four weeks.”

  Good.

  Having an entire month gave me time to focus on the case before making a decision.

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “If you’d rather keep things the way they are now, we can. I can move into the house. You can stay in the Airstream or do whatever you like. We can take turns staying overnight just as we do now.”

  “I may not know where I stand on living together just yet, but I am sure of one thing. From now on, I’ll try my best to show you the real version of me—the good, the bad, the things I’d rather you not see—all of it. And I want the same from you.” I thought about Olivia, about her parents, and how they must be feeling knowing their daughter had a side to her they didn’t know about. “I wonder if it’s so common to hide a version of ourselves from the people we care about?”

  “Over the years I’ve come to believe everyone has something to hide. For some, it’s minor things. For others, much of the persona they’ve adopted is a complete fabrication.”

  How much had Olivia been true to herself?

  Seventy-five percent?

  Fifty?

  Twenty-five?

  Less?

  More?

  I shared what I knew about Olivia so far, talked about the journal I’d found, the poetry book, the photos of a woman with her eyes scratched out.

  “In life, Olivia presented herself as a kind, affable person, someone who went with the flow,” I said. “In death, her demons have started coming out, demons I’m not sure anyone knew she had. All day today I’ve been wondering which Olivia is the real one. I think I understand now. They’re both her, aren’t they?”

  “Perhaps they are.”

  I’d rushed to Giovanni’s when he’d texted me saying he’d returned to Cambria—not having a moment’s time to study the journal and poetry book in more depth. And if I stayed, I knew it would nag at me. I needed to read those books.

  “I know I said I’d spend the night, but I think I s
hould take a look at Olivia’s journal and poetry book. Would it be all right if I stayed over tomorrow night?”

  “Of course.”

  He walked me to the door, and we said our goodbyes.

  As much as I didn’t want to leave, the need to learn more about Olivia Spencer and why she’d been murdered couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

  Chapter 9

  I changed out of my ’40s black-and-white shirtwaist dress and matching peep-toe shoes and checked the time. It was almost midnight, but I wasn’t about to let the time deter me from my present agenda. I hopped in the shower, settled in with Luka on the bed, and flipped on the lamp.

  I started with the journal, poring through entry after entry until they all blended together, sounding the same. In reading her diary, one would believe she’d led a normal, happy life—no hiccups, no problems. No ruffling of feathers was anywhere to be found. It was all “surface” stuff I felt she would have allowed anyone to see, instead of the person she was deep down, beneath the surface. The rather bland entries only made the ripped-out pages that much more curious.

  Disappointed, I reached for the book of poetry, hoping it would prove more insightful. It was spiral bound, and I wondered if some of the poems may have been torn out. For now, there was no way to know.

  The chicken-scratched words she’d written were full of hope and optimism, with the first entry being uplifting in tone:

  * * *

  i dig my toes into the sand

  feel the grittiness of the

  earth between my feet

  absorb the salty air into my skin

  i close my eyes allowing the sun’s

  warmth to penetrate through me

  it is here in these quiet moments

  i become my truest self

  open and vulnerable

  seeking to start anew and be free

  i urge you, dear reader, to do the same

  be gentle to yourselves and be kind

  when you have mastered this

  you will have mastered everything

  * * *