Providence (Providence #1)

I didn’t look back to see his inevitable bewildered expression; I was too intent on my mission. I would return to my mother’s house and turn it upside down if I had to. I ran down the hal to the open elevator and tapped the button of my floor several times, leaning back against the rail. As the doors final y closed, my mother squeezed by them, causing them to jolt open once more.

“I trust you’ve slept,” she said.

“Is that why you’re here?” I asked, surprised.

“Do I need a reason?” She was very nearly offended, but dismissed my question to address more important things. “Nina, honestly. You look frightful. How much sleep did you get?”

“Enough,” I stepped out of the elevator and pul ed her with me.

“What are you doing?” she asked, reluctant to be dragged along.

“I want to go home. Can I go home with you?”

“Of course.” I was sure she was curious what had possessed me to make such an atypical request; I had treated our home like ground zero of a quarantined leper colony since the funeral.

I tugged at her coat to quicken her pace and she abruptly stopped. “What is going on, Nina?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, pul ing at her arm again.

“This!” she said, motioning to my hand on her arm. “This is what I mean. What is so urgent?”

I exhaled in a frustrated puff. “Beth is at the hospital and I don’t want to be alone. I’m sorry if I’m being overly enthusiastic.”

“Enthusiastic? Nina, you haven’t tugged on my coat like that since you were five. Is there another reason you want to go home?”

I stared at her blankly. I didn’t want to lie to her again.

“Al right,” she sighed. “Robert is waiting in the car.”

En route, Cynthia fiddled with her careful y placed French bun and asked generic questions about school. She was suspicious of my behavior, but as was the norm with my mother, she insisted on overlooking the obvious to obtain a false sense of security. She didn’t speak for the rest of the trip home to keep from spoiling the il usion with trivial things like the truth.

Robert slowed when he entered our long drive. My mother smiled at him when he opened her door, and I fol owed behind her to the house.

Once inside, I peeled off my scarf, hat, coat, and final y my gloves. I rubbed the residual chil stil clinging to my arms, methodical y going over my plan in my mind.

“Nina, don’t hover in doorways. It’s rude.”

“I’m going upstairs,” I said in passing.

I rushed to my father’s office, hoping my eyes would open to something I had missed before. I walked along the outer edges of the room and ran my hand along the surface of the wal , feeling the uneven texture with my fingertips. I tried not to concentrate on any one thing; I wanted to leave my mind open to any clues that I might have overlooked before.

My fingertips grazed the spines of my father’s books. I pul ed a few of them out and looked behind them, knocking on the wal they stood against. I crawled under his desk and felt for anything abnormal.

When I found nothing, I returned to the wal s, the cabinets, and then the bookcase. I went over them al again, trying to see them a different way, to touch them differently, to appraise them for anything that seemed out of place. As my patience waned, so did my objectivity. I began plowing through the cabinets as I had before, slamming them shut and muttering under my breath.

I sat on the floor against the front of Jack’s desk and stared across the room with my elbows on my knees. The answers were here; I was missing something.

I lifted my chin in interest when my father’s favorite painting caught my eye. I scrambled to my feet and reached under the edges of the large frame.

Determined, I reached closer to its center, knelt down and peered under it, and even pul ed it a bit from the wal . I didn’t see anything remarkable, so I reached up blindly, hoping to find something that didn’t belong. There was nothing.

I stomped in anger. “DADDY!”

I looked around the room with my hands defiantly on my hips, blowing my bangs from my face. There were four other paintings in the room. I rushed each one, mimicking the sweep I’d just done with the larger painting. I ripped the fourth one off the wal and searched the backside of the frame.

Looking at the now-empty wal , I felt another scream of aggravation coming on.

How could there be nothing in his office? No safes, no secret doorways, no….

Keys. There were keys in Jack’s desk. The first time I’d searched his office I assumed they were his car keys. But the car he drove himself—his Jag —was totaled. Scrap metal. What were the keys to?

In my haste to get to the desk, my hip smashed into the corner with a loud crack. I stifled a cry and doubled over, using the desk to steady myself. I attempted to rub the sting away with one hand, and pul ed open the drawer containing the keys with the other. I held the keys in my palm, trying to remember if I’d seen a lock that the keys might fit. I slowly turned my head toward the wal of cabinets. The center tower of files was locked.

Surely, he wouldn’t be this obvious, I thought.

I hobbled to the cabinets and tugged on the drawer. It was stil locked.

The first key only went in half way. I tried three more keys; the fourth easily slid in, but wouldn’t turn. Two keys later, I found myself cursing my father, Mr. Dawson, even the metal in my hands. I gripped the last key between my thumb and finger and closed my eyes.

The key slid in, and I rotated my wrist. It began to turn, and then caught. None of the keys were to the locked file cabinet.

“Damn it!” I said, throwing the keys to the floor. I kicked the cabinet, walked away, and then returned to land another kick, this time denting the bottom.

Limping across the floor, I picked up the keys and tossed them into the desk drawer. I was done.

I walked down the hal with my hand stil pressed against my throbbing hip and stopped at the top of the stairs. Cynthia’s voice was weary as she spoke on the phone. Idling for a moment before taking the first stair, I heard her speak my name.

“Nina’s fine. She’s upstairs, resting. What do you expect me to do? Forbid her to...? Honestly, you worry too much! She just didn’t want to be alone tonight. I heard some commotion upstairs; I assumed she knocked something over. It mustn’t have been as bad as…,” she sighed, “yes. I’l check on her. Goodnight.”

Cynthia turned to look up at me. I sheepishly waved, cursing under my breath for getting caught eavesdropping.

“Are you al right, Dear?” she cal ed.

“I’m fine. Ran into a desk; bumped my side. Who was that?”

She shrugged. “Was it real y necessary to yel out such profanities while I’m on the phone? My friends were under the impression that I had raised a lady.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was being so loud.”

Cynthia nodded dismissively. “I’ve got a beautiful ham in the oven. You’l be staying for dinner, won’t you?”

“Er…yes. I was going to stop by the hospital, but it can wait.”

Cynthia made her way up the stairs. I fol owed into her study where she set some unopened envelopes on her desk.

“How is your friend doing?” she asked, I assumed just to be polite.

“I’m not sure, I haven’t been back since this morning, but no one’s cal ed to tel me otherwise. I’m sure there’s been improvement.”

“Wonderful news, Dear,” she said, preoccupied.

She pul ed her pearl drop earrings from her ears, and placed them on the silver tray that sat on a smal table near the wal . My eyes wandered to a hutch that matched her table and desk. The fronds of a plant obscured the top cabinet, and I zeroed in on a smal silver circle on the top right corner.

“Coming, Nina?” Cynthia asked, pausing at the door.

“I’l be down in a minute. I wanted to check my e-mail, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at al ,” she smiled. “Don’t be late for dinner.”

I watched her walk out the door and waited as she descended the stairs. Once she was deeper into the lower level, I sprinted down the hal to my father’s office. Yanking open his desk drawer, I grabbed the smal silver ring of keys.

With a sense of excitement, I hurried back to my mother’s study and pul ed the plant to the floor. It was heavier than it appeared, and I grunted as I worked to set it down without overturning the whole pot onto its side.

After the first five keys failed, I blew my bangs from my face with a puff of air. Only two keys left. The sixth key slid in, and when I turned my wrist and the key continued to turn ninety degrees, I gasped.

Pul ing the cabinet door open, I peered behind me for a just a moment, afraid of what my mother would say if she caught me snooping in her things.

There were several files, so I pul ed al of them out and spread them on the floor. On my knees, I thumbed through contracts, shipping papers, a receipt for the ring my father bought me, insurance claims and filings, and the occasional deposit slip.

I slid one folder to the side to uncover another with Jack’s no-nonsense scribble on it.

Port of Providence My hands shook as I opened the flap of the folder. Did I real y want to know? I felt I was opening Pandora’s Box.

Sitting on top, I found a thick, wrinkled manila envelope. I pul ed the packet from the file and opened it. It contained a stack of black and white photos. Picture after picture featured a dozen or so different men, but those same faces appeared over and over, at times alone, and at other times together. One man that was most often the subject in the pictures stood beside the governor of Rhode Island. Another man was pictured in both casual clothes and some type of uniform; I assumed he was a police officer in formal blues.

I’d seen enough movies to know that these were surveil ance photos. I turned each of the pictures over, but they were al unmarked. I had never seen these men before that I could remember, and I couldn’t fathom why my father would have them photographed. I looked at the file on the floor, knowing I was about to find out.

A hand-written sheet of paper caught my eye, and I poured over it. I flipped to the next page, and the next. My heart pounded as the words burned into my irises. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.

“Nina? Dinner!”

I rushed to gather the files and shoved them into Cynthia’s hutch. I locked the cabinet door and heaved the clay pot back to its shelf. After returning the keys to Jack’s desk drawer, I met Cynthia in the dining room.

I sat in my usual chair, across from my mother. A steaming plate of food waited for me on fine china, and I grimaced as the mouth-watering smel invaded my nose. I realized I hadn’t eaten since five o’clock the evening before. I was famished, but couldn’t eat.

“Aren’t you hungry, dear?”

I furrowed my brow and stabbed a carrot with my fork. Her strained politeness would soon be chipped away and al the pleasantries would cease.

“Not real y.”

“Wel , why not?” I waited for the right words to come and she rol ed her eyes with impatience. “Real y, Nina. You know I don’t like it when—”

“Has Daddy always been a criminal, or was it something he took up just before he died?” I blurted out, unconcerned with the consequences.

Cynthia’s fork fel to her plate with a shril clang. She didn’t say anything for a long while. We both held our breath, waiting for the other to speak.

“What…did you say?” she final y whispered.

“You heard me.”

“No. I don’t believe I did. I’m sure you misspoke,” her eyes fluttered as she ended her sentence.

“Port of Providence.” I sat slightly forward in my chair, watching her expression change from insult to shock.

“What? Where did you hear th—,” Cynthia stopped mid-sentence and shook her head. She was flustered, which she rarely experienced.

“I saw the file, Mother. Was it organized crime, or did he just skim off the top at the docks? You know his payrol was ful of dirty cops, right?”

“Nina Elizabeth Grey! You wil shut your mouth this instant!” I could see the wheels in her head turning, and then she stood up to come to my side of the table, sitting beside me. “You saw files. What files?” I could tel her fury was subdued, she would address my disrespect later.

“The files locked in the hutch in your study, Mother. Stop playing dumb.”

Her eyes tightened; my rudeness narrowly outweighed her curiosity. “I’ve never played dumb in my life, Nina. Why on earth would you—,”

“I want the truth.” I didn’t let my eyes move an inch from her gaze.

“I didn’t bother myself with your father’s business dealings,” she said, turning away.

“But you know what I’m talking about when I say Port of Providence, don’t you?” My accusing eyes bored into her.

Cynthia nodded slightly. “That’s not something you want to admit to having knowledge of, Nina. Forget you saw any of that,” she whispered.

“Forget—,” I was in shock. My father was a…a….criminal? A thief? My face twisted into disgust. “He stole from the distributors he shipped for, he sold things on the black market, he smuggled il egal contraband, and he used cops to cover up his dirty work…police officers, Mother! Al of which he gathered evidence against to keep them from turning on him!” My eyes glossed over with anger. “Everything we have is from blood money. Jack had people beaten…he’s had people kil ed.”

Cynthia wiped a tear and looked down at her lap. This took me off-guard; I had only seen my mother cry a handful of times, al of them fol owing Jack’s accident and death.

“Oh, Jack,” she whispered, shaking her head slowly. She looked at me with sympathetic eyes, “You were never supposed to see those things, Nina.