AncilShe placed the ladder in the middle of the room and climbed to what seemed like just a regular bare part of the ceiling. She pushed her hands against the ceiling and a secret compartment opened up. She looked back at me with a warm smile and said, “Come on.” She then climbed up through the secret compartment.
I followed her and found myself in a dusty, old attic that had thick spider webs draped almost everywhere and old magazines scattered all over the floor as well as on a couple tables. There were bookshelves stuffed to capacity, a couple of small wooden chests, and one huge safe in the middle. There was something about a place filled with books that looked so magical.
Kate opened the safe and I stood beside her as she did. The safe was loaded with money neatly stacked up. There was a lot of money in there.
“I assume that this is your secret stash,” I said.
“Not mine. My mom’s. For most of her adult life, she worked at a fancy restaurant named Decoir. A lot of rich people ate there and every time she got a tip she would come up here and hide it in this safe. I was the only person who knew about it and she made me promise never to tell my father. She said that she was going to use the money to start a new life, just me and her. We’d fly to Tobago in the Caribbean and she said that she’d look for the most beautiful Tobago man she could find and live the rest of her life with him under the coconut trees.”
“I don’t think Tobago people live under coconut trees.”
“I know,” she laughed. “It was just the idea of it.”
“How much money did she save?”
“The last time she told me it was eight thousand.”
“Eight grand? That’s actually a lot of money.”
