A soaked little boy walked into my struggling Chicago diner during a violent storm, shivering so badly he could barely hold the small paper bag in his hands.1

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You said ‘so.’ That’s worse.”

He picked up Mikhail’s card and looked at it, careful not to bend the edges. “Anna, this is not nothing.”

“I know.”

“Your father knew his brother.”

“I know.”

“His nanny sent that boy here.”

“I heard.”

“And you apparently have something to remember.”

I rubbed my forehead. “I might.”

Ray lowered the card. “What?”

“My father’s old blue  toolbox.”

Ray’s eyebrows lifted. “The one from the basement?”

I stared at him. “How do you know about that?”

“Your dad brought it here once, years ago. Wouldn’t let me touch it.”

“When?”

Ray thought. “Maybe a few months before he passed.”

A strange feeling opened in my chest.

“What did he do with it?”

“He took it into the back office. Stayed there a long time. When he came out, he looked…” Ray paused.

“Looked what?”

“Like he had seen a ghost.”

My mouth went dry.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because after he died, you were barely holding yourself together. And honestly, Anna, I thought maybe it was just grief making me remember it wrong.”

I looked toward the hallway that led to the back office.

The diner was old enough to have noises of its own. Pipes ticking. Fridge humming. Wind pressing against weak seals around the back door. Usually those sounds comforted me. 

Restaurants

Tonight they sounded like whispers.

Ray followed my gaze.

“You think the toolbox is here?”

“No. It’s at home.”

“Are you sure?”

I started to say yes.

Then I remembered something else.

The winter after Dad died, I had cleared out some things from the apartment because I couldn’t bear to look at them. Old uniforms, broken appliances, boxes of receipts. I had brought several bins to the diner basement because I told myself I would sort them later.

Later had become six years.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not sure.”

Ray sighed. “Of course not.”

We checked the basement first.

The diner basement was a place I avoided whenever possible. It smelled of dust, onions, old wood, and faint dampness. The lightbulb at the bottom of the stairs swung slightly when the storm shook the building. Metal shelves lined the walls, packed with  paper towels, canned tomatoes, holiday decorations, and things my father had refused to throw away because “you never know.”

Ray came down behind me with a flashlight.

“You realize this is how people in movies find cursed dolls,” he said.

“Stop talking.”

“I’m just saying, if something whispers my name, I’m leaving you.”

“Good to know.”

We searched for twenty minutes.

Old tax boxes.

Christmas garland.

A broken milkshake machine.

Three chairs my father had insisted he would fix someday.

No blue toolbox.

I was about to give up when Ray, crouched near the old freezer, said, “Anna.”

Something in his voice made me turn.

He was holding a small cardboard box labeled in my father’s handwriting.

NAPKINS / EXTRA MENUS.

Except it was far too heavy for napkins.

I knelt beside him and opened it.

Inside were menus, just as labeled.

Underneath them was a folded dish towel.

Under that, a metal cash box.

Not the blue toolbox.

Smaller.

Black.

Locked.

My heart began to pound.

Ray whispered, “That yours?”