Page 44 of Death Wish

There was a bang, like a drawer closing too hard, and then Sean emerged again, pushing past his father with a small box in hand, maybe the size of a shoebox. It was difficult to see what it was made of—wood? It was too old and dirty to tell, caked in dried mud or sap or something else disgusting.

“Here.” Sean gasped, almost tripping over a pile of boxes as he barreled back into the living room. “Here. This is it.”

“Sean…” Wyatt warned. “What is that?”

Sean thrust the box at me. “See? There. There it is. It’s the same symbol.”

I peered down at the box, and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. He was right. On the top of the crusty-looking box was the same design as my tattoo etched into the wood roughly.

“W-What is this?” I asked, my voice trembling. My chest was suddenly so tight, breathing hurt. It was the first time I’d seen anything resembling my tattoo, and here it was, the very thing that could give me some hint to who I was.

A quick glance at Wyatt’s weighted expression revealed two things: he didn’t like that his son had ruffled through his mother’s things, and he had completely forgotten about this box.

“We don’t know exactly.” Sean shot up as he tried to rein in his excitement. “It’s something my mother found during her travels. She was a self-made anthropologist of sorts.”

“That’s a nice way to put it. She would have liked that one,” Wyatt said with a sad smile.

Oh. So she was dead.

Sean’s interest in the afterlife was because he had lost his mother.

“We never could get this thing open.” Sean dug his fingers into the dip along the edge and pulled to show me he wasn’t lying. It didn’t budge. “We don’t want to destroy it, either, because it’s a piece of history, you know? That’s what Ma always said, anyway. Out of everything she’d collected, it was her favorite piece.”

He smiled, but it was a heavy one, full of unexpressed pain and grief. “It’s definitely the same symbol though.”

“Yeah, it is.” I reached out and ran my finger over the dirty cover along the rough edges of the design.

From within the box, there was a loud pop. It startled Sean enough that he let go of the box, but I was quick enough to snatch it as it fell. The moment my palm connected with it, there was a flash of white light, and the lid sprung open, as if whatever was inside couldn’t be contained any longer.

As if it had been meant just for me.

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