Page 44 of Date With Danger

She rolls her eyes and comes over to help me. “How are you going to get the backing off?”

“I don’t know,” I say, rubbing my hands along the thick velvet. “A knife?”

She steals one from the drawer and hands it to me.

“A butter knife, really?”

She grins. “I don’t trust you with sharp objects. Remember when you cut yourself on cheese?”

“In my defense, the cheese was dried out and very sharp.” I drop the butter knife and pull a real knife from the drawer. Strong and dangerous. How I like my men.

Maddie throws her hands up and backs away.

I work slowly, careful not to disturb the frame, prying one millimeter of velvet up at a time. “I think someone super glued this crap,” I mutter.

“Probably because it’s not supposed to come off in the first place,” Maddie says from where she’s parked her ridiculously toned tush on the couch.

“You’re not being very helpful.”

“I’m protecting the dogs from the crazy lady with a knife.”

She makes a point.

I get one edge of the velvet off and start on the next while Maddie flips on the TV. But I don’t look away from what I’m doing for fear of cutting off one of my very favorite fingers. For the record, they’re all my favorites. Especially the not-so-friendly one in the middle used specifically for driving.

I peel back the corner I’ve got uncovered and squint inside. It looks like there’s another painting on the backside.

I free a few more inches of the backing then use my phone flashlight to look inside. It is another painting. It’s far better than the first one. Someone with talent painted this lonely girl standing in the middle of a crowd but seen by no one. My pulse slows as I study the tears streaming down her face in every color imaginable. It’s beautiful, but at the same time, heart-wrenching. It’s familiar. Painful. I feel this girl to my core.

My parents had to know what was back here, right? I turn the painting back to the ugly side, scouring it for understanding. When I find what I’m looking for I nearly laugh out loud. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. In the corner, partially hidden by the frame is LQ. My mom’s initials. She painted something hideous on the other side and turned it around so it wouldn’t get stolen on the journey home. My parents always traveled with the ugliest, beat-up luggage or put silly stickers on the back of their cars like “Ask me about my explosive diarrhea” to keep people from robbing them. They were ridiculous like that.

When I was a teenager, those things used to embarrass me. Now I’m relieved my parents weren’t conned out of thousands of dollars for a child’s painting. But I feel a little too seen by the girl in the other picture. Because she’s me. Trying to fill the empty spaces in my life, waiting for someone to love me for me, waiting to find my place in the world. I love it and hate it at the same time. But I’m not ready to hang it up yet.

On second thought, I’ll have Maddie take the whole thing to Connor. I’ll tell them about the painting inside later and we can decide what to do with it. I press the velvet back into the still-sticky wood frame and heft the painting off the table. In my quick attempt to put the painting back, I end up kicking the box over. Styrofoam packing squares tumble to the linoleum floor.

Sighing, I leave them there and put the painting into the box without the squares. By the time I’ve finished taping the box back up, Shawn has turned one of the Styrofoam bricks into snow.

I groan, shooing him away while I go to work on the mess.

“What do you want to watch?” Maddie asks.

“I don’t care.” I pick up the other bricks, catching a glimpse of something shiny wedged in the corner of one. My mom loved getting jewelry from the locals on their trips. That woman could haggle a con artist. It must have fallen off her wrist when she was packing the painting up. I break open the brick and Shawn holds out his tongue to lap up the miniature Styrofoam balls raining over him. I pull the shiny object free, but it's not a bracelet, it’s a key.

“We can do something else,” Maddie says.

Why is there a key stuffed into foam in a box with two paintings that my parents sent home from Italy before they died?

Black tape covers the end of the key, weathered from traversing through four years of changing seasons. I peel off the tape, scratching gently at the remnants with my fingernail.

“Millie? Did you have something in mind?”

There are three letters on the key, SJB and the number seventy-eight. It’s too small to be a home or car key, but the options are still limitless. A safe. My palm tingles where the key rests on top, pulling energy from whatever secret it contains. “I think I’d like to solve a mystery.”

“Huh?”

I hold up the key.

Maddie uncrosses her legs, pushing off the couch to join me in the kitchen. Both of us study the key in my hand.