Mirrored Exile (HS)

twenty seven

chapter twenty seven - with or without you

Lucy Caddel

"The red eye wasn't the restaurant, it was this." I swallowed anxiously, glancing down the stairs. The breeze came with the opening as if it were planned. Harry looked at me with a strange, monotone expression on his face. He began to walk down the stairs and I followed close behind him. It was a dark tunnel with a barrier that ended where the flashlight pointed. I think it was a door. It smelt like old rainwater and grass down here.

"The door has a key code," Harry leaned down to the panel with the numbered buttons, they had been worn and faded. Probably from being used often. "Do you know a number your Uncle may have used a lot?"

"I think so," I say as Harry steps out of the way. I entered the numbers I remember. It was the key code to our safe which we barely used. It was also used for our bikes to unchain them before we went on our bike rides together. In the sequence of lowest to highest, I entered the numbers:

4 - 19 - 27

The numbers were mine, my Uncle's and my Aunty's birthdates in order. The door clicked open and a green light flashed at us. Harry leaned over my shoulder with his bicep right near my cheek. He pushed the door inwards and we were met with a room. A table in the middle, stacked with paper. There is writing all over the walls, cabinets with scratched paint, and a smashed lamp in the corner. A record player that my Aunty found at a garage sale, I could never forget what it looked like because it had a deep, red wine stain in the varnish.

We walked into the room, floorboards creaking with each step. It smells of paint and musk, assuming it's from the broken candle that is on the floor.

"You never knew this was here?" Harry asks, swiping his finger on the dusty shelves.

"N-no." I struggled to get words out, scanning the papers on the table for anything related to what we came here for. Harry set out the reports to compare. There were newspapers and photos that we had seen and sketches of things we hadn't seen.

"Isn't this that ceramic swan that they stole?" Harry held a sketch up. I nodded, admiring the image drawn in pencil.

"What's that next to it?" I pointed. It looked like a wedding ring with a large, pearly white jewel in it. Harry narrowed his eyes before a wave of realization changed his expression. He dropped the paper and paced back around the room, scavenging through boxes and cases.

"Harry," I said loud so he could hear me over the noise but he still chose to ignore me. "Harry, can you say something?"

Eventually, he came to a halt at a box on the floor, he lifted out an object that glimmered under the dim light.

"Why the fuck does your Uncle have my mother's wedding ring?" He storms back over to me and tosses the ring on the table.

"What? I- I don't know." I choked on my words. There was anger behind his tone, not obvious enough to tell if he was mad at me though.

"My mother said this was stolen, she was broken when it was. Is your Uncle responsible for this?" He raises his voice, I hear the echo down the tunnel in the silence after.

"Harry, I already said, I don't know," I unfold my arms to seem more assertive but it's hard to when someone like him is facing me. "Does your mother know where it was stolen?"