The time capsule is the safest place for it. Dad will never find it here.”
I went back inside. Mom had placed the tea on the kitchen table and was just setting out a plate of cookies.
“Mom, I was wondering, does Jonah still live in town?”
She went completely still, like I’d flipped a switch and frozen her in place. “Didn’t you hear?” she said finally. “Jonah vanished five years ago, after the money went missing from the church.”
“You might not like to hear it,” Mom finished, “but it’s obvious that he took the money.
It’s a shame… I thought he’d overcome his past, but growing up with a father like that, I guess it was just a matter of time before he turned bad.”
I sat down before my knees gave out. Jonah, a thief? I couldn’t believe it.
Sure, he had a dark side — I remembered the night he smashed a window at the school pool, glass scattering like ice, but when I told him he was scaring me, he’d apologized and walked me home. I didn’t sleep that night. At two in the morning, I found myself pulling on a jacket and stepping into the backyard again.
The town lay in quiet darkness, the kind you only get in small places where nobody’s awake to turn on lights. The treehouse rose like a skeleton in the moonlight. I was going to keep my promise, even if Jonah was long gone.
I lifted the photo out first. God, we were so young, so happy. I carefully tucked it into my pocket, and then I dug through the ancient candy and toys until I found Jonah’s key.
I picked it up, turning it over in the flashlight beam. This was the most important item in here, the mystery that had plagued me for decades: what did the key unlock? “I need you to give that to me, Ellie.”
My heart crashed against my ribs.
“Is it true?” I asked. My voice sounded young and scared, like I was eight again. “They say you stole money from the church…”
“I’m not here to explain,” he said.
His voice was low, stretched thin like fabric about to tear. He reached for the key, but I pulled back instinctively. “But how?
What does it unlock?”
I held it up. Jonah lunged forward, snatched the key from my hand, and took off into the darkness. I didn’t even think.
I ran after him across backyards and over fences, down shortcuts only kids from this town would know. The chase led through a wide-open field, my lungs burning, until we reached Jonah’s childhood home. The house sagged with rot and silence, and the porch groaned beneath his weight as he slipped inside.
I followed him through the darkness, my flashlight sweeping across dust-covered furniture, across the ghosts of a life nobody wanted to remember. He turned to face me in the narrow hallway, blocking my path forward. “You shouldn’t have followed me, Ellie,” he said quietly.
He laughed then, a bitter sound that echoed off the peeling walls like something from a horror movie. “Well, everyone else believes it,” he said. “And that’s what counts.
But soon, it won’t matter anymore.”
He led me to the back of the house, to his old room. The walls were bare, the carpet rotted away to nothing. He kneeled and peeled back a warped floorboard.
From the space beneath, he pulled out a canvas bag. He held up the key. I watched as it turned in the lock — click — and the lid fell open.
It looked like it was full of crumpled bills at first, but Jonah dug through them and pulled out a necklace with a deep blue stone that glowed faintly in the flashlight beam. “My mom saved every penny,” Jonah said. “This box was her way of giving me a future.
Today’s the day I use it.”
My breath caught. “The pastor’s daughter?” I asked. He nodded.
“She was pregnant, but she didn’t want anyone to know. She took the money. I helped her disappear.”
Then the sirens pierced the darkness.
Red and blue lights strobed through the slats of the boarded windows like a strobe light. Jonah bolted to the window. I reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t! You’ll only make things worse.”
He tried to pull away, but I held tight. “You’ve been running for five years, Jonah,” I said.
“And for what? The pastor’s daughter is long gone. It’s time to tell the truth.”
He looked at me, and the weight of everything twisted his face into something I barely recognized.
“They might charge you with aiding and abetting. Maybe obstruction. But you’d probably get probation, maybe a fine.
Especially if you come in willingly and tell them everything. You’ll have a chance to explain yourself.”
I stepped closer. “But if you keep running, and they catch you — and they will catch you — it’ll be worse.
Resisting arrest, evading law enforcement… Suddenly, you’re the criminal they always said you were.”
I gave him one last truth, the only one that mattered: “Show them who you really are, Jonah.”
He stopped and looked at me. I watched the fight draining from him like air from a balloon. Outside, footsteps crunched over gravel.
Flashlights beamed through broken glass. “You sure about this?” His voice was barely above a whisper. The door burst open, and officers stormed in, weapons drawn, voices shouting.
I stepped back, and Jonah raised his hands. Calm. Ready.
He didn’t look at me again. He didn’t need to. I watched as they led him away, and I realized that sometimes keeping a promise meant letting go.
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