My house had never felt dangerous before. It was a narrow craftsman on Willow Street, with pale green siding, uneven floors, and a kitchen Rosie loved because the cabinets were painted yellow.
She had helped me choose that color.
Sunshine belongs inside too, she had said.
Now every shadow seemed occupied.
Daniel locked the door behind us.
“What exactly did Rosie hide?”
“A drive.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
He studied me.
“You brought me here without knowing where the evidence is?”
“She left a letter.”
I gave him the four pages.
He read them standing in my living room. His expression changed at the first line but remained controlled through the rest.
On the final page, Rosie had written:
The key is where Claire keeps the promise she broke.
Daniel looked up.
“What promise?”
“I don’t know.”
“You and Rosie have any childhood hiding places?”
“Dozens.”
“Think.”
I walked through the house while rain began tapping against the windows.
Where did I keep a broken promise?
My bedroom?
The attic?
The cedar box containing our mother’s jewelry?
Then I saw the framed photograph above the fireplace.
Rosie and me beside a lake, ages twelve and eleven. We wore matching red life jackets. I had one arm around her shoulders.
The summer before that picture, I had promised I would never swim without her.
Two weeks later, I went to a pool party hosted by girls who refused to invite Rosie.
She found out.
She did not speak to me for three days.
I lifted the frame.
Nothing.
Daniel checked the backing.
“No compartment.”
Another memory surfaced.
When Rosie was fourteen, she made me promise I would never read her diary.
I broke that promise after she wrote that a boy at school was calling her names. I wanted to know who he was.
Her old diary was in my attic.
I climbed the narrow stairs, Daniel behind me.
The attic smelled of dust and cedar. Boxes lined the rafters. Christmas ornaments, college textbooks, our mother’s dishes, clothes I had not worn in a decade.
I found the plastic container labeled ROSIE—KEEP.
Inside were school papers, ribbons, handmade birthday cards, and a small pink diary secured with a useless silver lock.
I opened it.
A rectangular section had been cut from the back cover.
