Alone For Good

Chapter Ten: Sometimes Lying Is Better Than The Truth

Morning was as great as the day before and I couldn't be more grateful. It was these kinds of days that lifted my spirit. When I went to the kitchen I saw Hank. He was looking at a bunch of papers that had numbers on them. As I looked closer I realized those numbers were bills and Hank didn't look too happy about them. "What's wrong?" I asked hoping he would answer. "It's my wife. She is suing me for not helping her. The court wants me to pay her so that she can live on her own for a while. But the money she wants is incredible, I can't pay her that much," he sighed. Why did she have to ruin this beautiful morning? "I wish I could help you, but I don't have any money," I said. After reading the rest of the papers he put them in a drawer and locked it, as if it held a big secret inside.

Later that day he went to work. He never showed me the bills, and for some reason I had a great urge to see them. Didn't he tell her to go away? "I want to know exactly what she is suing him for, maybe I can help," I thought. When I tried to open the drawer it wouldn't move. "Oh I forgot he locked it," I thought looking for where he but the key. "Where did he put it?" After searching for a while I opened a drawer that had many keys in them. The one Hank used was silver, but there were three silver keys. Without being noticed I took all three keys and stuffed it in my pocket. "What are you doing?" said a soft sweet voice coming from Riley, Hank's daughter. "Oh! You scared me. I was just... Getting my key that I left here," I said panicking, hoping she would go away. "Okay, goodbye then," she said as she skipped away. "That was close," I thought as I let out all the air I was holding in.

Hoping no one was watching, I quickly ran over to the locked drawer and used the first key to unlock it. That didn't work. Then I tried the second and third one. None of the keys worked. "He must have hid it," I thought. "But where?" "Are you looking for something?" said Riley's brother, Jordon who crept up to me without my knowing. "They should put a bell on you and your sister if you guys keep scaring me like that. I'm just looking for something... I lost," I said hiding the keys behind my back. "What do you have there?" he asked as he obviously noticed that I was holding something behind my back. "Oh um it's just my phone," I lied as I slid the keys into my back pockets on my pants. "Can I see?" he said as he pestered me, being so noisy. "You can't.... It's dead so it would be pointless. I have to go so..." I said as I quickly slid past him and ran to my room.

"They can be so cute but when they ask questions they get very annoying," I thought. "Maybe he put the key in his room so that no one would get it." When I got to Hank's room I searched drawer through drawer of all his clothing and belongings but none of them had the key. "Ugh," I groaned as I sat down on his bed exhausted of searching for so long. As I did that I realized something slid out from his pillow. It was shiny silver and I realized what it was, it was the key! "Yes!" I thought as I quickly grabbed it and managed to get out of his room. After leaving his room and going to the kitchen, I tested the key, and it opened the drawer. When I took the papers and looked over it, I saw that it had nothing to do with his ex suing him. In fact it wasn't even close with that. It was actually normal bills, and they were pretty high. As guilt spread over me, I realized that he lied to me the whole time. If I wasn't here, the bills would not be as expensive. The whole time after reading the papers the four words kept repeating in my head "he lied to me."