Chapter 2 - The Key in the Broken Virgin
The text message from Uncle Joel stayed on Callie’s phone screen like a digital poison. “Don’t involve lawyers. You have no idea what you’re starting.”
Callie sat on the edge of her worn-out sofa, her heart hammering against her ribs. She looked over at Geneva, who was now sleeping peacefully under a knitted patchwork blanket, her chest rising and falling in a shallow, fragile rhythm.
"What did they do to you, Grandma?" Callie whispered, brushing a stray silver lock from the elderly woman's forehead.
The clue Geneva had mumbled kept looping in Callie's mind: "The key sleeps with the broken Virgin... Five... Eight... Two... One... Box 5821... where the bell sings."
Callie knew she couldn't sleep. She needed to decode this riddle before Joel and Dakota decided to take bolder, more dangerous steps. She grabbed an old leather-bound notebook and began writing down everything she knew about her grandmother’s past.
Geneva had been a deeply religious woman, but she wasn’t one for modern mega-churches. For forty years, she had volunteered at St. Jude’s, a small, historic Catholic parish in the old historic district of Fairview. The church had been partially abandoned after a fire five years ago, its bell tower silent, but the structural bones of the sanctuary still stood.
Where the bell sings.
"St. Jude’s," Callie gasped softly. The church had a massive bronze bell that used to ring every day at noon. And inside the courtyard, Callie vividly remembered a small grotto with a stone statue of the Virgin Mary. During the fire, a falling beam had chipped away the left hand and the base of the statue. The broken Virgin.
The next morning, after hiring Mrs. Gable, a trusted retired nurse from next door, to watch Geneva for a few hours, Callie grabbed her coat and drove her beat-up sedan to the old district.
The air was damp and cold. St. Jude’s stood like a gray ghost among modern concrete buildings. The iron gates were chained, but the chain was loose enough for Callie to squeeze through. She walked past overgrown weeds and shattered stained glass until she reached the courtyard.
There she was. The stone statue of the Virgin Mary, soot-stained and weathered, her left hand missing, leaving a jagged, broken wrist.
Callie knelt in the damp dirt before the statue. She examined the base. It was made of solid granite, but as she ran her fingers along the back of the pedestal, near the broken fold of the stone robe, her fingers brushed against a hollow space. It was a small, artificial crevice, stuffed with gray moss to hide it.
Heart pounding, Callie pulled the moss away. Her fingers hit something cold and metallic.
She pulled it out. It was a heavy, old-fashioned brass key. Engraved on the bow of the key was a tiny, faded crest of a long-gone local institution: Fairview Provident Trust.
And wrapped around the shank of the key with a piece of yellowed scotch tape was a hand-written note in her grandmother's elegant, bygone cursive: 5821.
"I found it," Callie breathed, tears stinging her eyes. "I actually found it."
May you like
But as she stood up, the sound of snapping twigs behind her made her freeze. She turned slowly. Standing near the broken gate of the courtyard was a dark, tinted-window SUV. The engine was idling. Through the windshield, she couldn't see the driver's face, but as soon as they realized Callie had seen them, the vehicle shifted into reverse and sped away, tires screeching against the wet asphalt.
They were watching her. Joel and Dakota weren't just running away from a burden; they were actively monitoring her. Callie gripped the key tightly in her pocket, ran back to her car, and locked the doors, her hands shaking so violently she could barely put the key in the ignition.
