The Promise of Home Read Free Page A

that it wasn’t empty, either.
    Maybe the key to the briefcase is still in the compartment.
    Again, she shone the flashlight down into the hole. She was more careful this time, moving the light slowly and running her fingers through the dust at the bottom of the compartment in the hope of finding a wayward key. She found nothing, and the disturbed dust rose in a cloud that sent her into a sneezing fit.
    When she had recovered, she took another good look at her find. A small bronze plaque attached to one corner of the case was engraved with P. MCALLISTER . Obviously, it had belonged to a member of the McAllister family and eventually, Mary McAllister. Which meant that now, like everything in the McAllister mansion, it was the property of Ruth and her husband.
    I can drop it off at the Fitzgeralds’ apartment on the way home,
Emily thought, but telling herself this did nothing to lessen her intense curiosity about what was inside the old briefcase. Surely she could find a way to open it without breaking the locks. The case was in remarkable condition and probably valuable as an antique. Plus, she reasoned, it would be a favor to Ruth, since she and her husband would be able to inspect its contents easily.
    Of course, if I open it, I’ll be able to see what’s in it, too.
    A part of her was ashamed at her willingness to justify and commit such an inappropriate invasion of privacy. Still, that part wasn’t strong enough to prevent her from going back to her toolbox in search of a small screwdriver or a long nail—or anything else that might help her coax the locks on the briefcase into revealing what was inside.
    —
    As the afternoon gave way to a chilly evening, Father O’Brien drove carefully down the main road leaving Mill River. However, instead of following the curve of the road around and through the old covered bridge spanning the river for which the town was named, he turned left into a driveway and parked.
    As he had recently started to do before meeting with someone in person, he snapped his fingers several times, first on one side of his head and then the other, to make sure he could hear them properly. For a nonagenarian, he was in excellent health. His vision was still remarkably good; he’d easily passed the vision test the last time he had renewed his license. But his hearing was another matter. He’d finally had to get hearing aids for both ears, and they were simultaneously a godsend and a major annoyance. When they were inserted and functioning normally, he could hear quite well. But getting them adjusted to the proper volume in each ear, and making sure the batteries had enough juice, was a constant struggle. Today he had been called to the home of Karen Cooper, one of his parishioners, and he knew it was especially important that he be able to hear everything clearly once he was inside.
    A car in desperate need of a new muffler drove by just as he stepped down out of his pickup truck. He suddenly felt a bit dizzy, and he kept his hand on the doorframe until the sensation passed. Maybe his hearing aids weren’t quite as calibrated as he thought, or maybe the unusually loud noise of the car was too much for them to handle. He snapped his fingers again to reassure himself, then approached the front door of the Cooper residence. Jean Wykowski, Karen’s next-door neighbor, opened the door before he’d even raised his hand to knock.
    “Hello, Father. Thank you for coming so quickly.” Jean’s expression was grim.
    “Hello, Jean,” he said quietly. He could see over Jean’s shoulder into the kitchen, where Karen and her son, Ben, sat at the table. “You said on the phone that Nick’s gone missing?”
    “Yes, they just got word,” Jean said, her voice barely above a whisper. “No one’s seen him in four days, since he went out for supplies.”
    “Oh, my,” Father O’Brien said.
    “They’ve got people out looking for him, troops mostly, but some private security teams, too. Karen’s taking