Adelaide's Box

Adelaide hadn’t worn a dress in a long time— six months, to be exact, though it felt much longer— and had thus forgotten how wholeheartedly she hated the sensation. She hated the way her chest felt compressed, and legs dangled in the breeze, not to mention the irritating way her thighs rubbed against one another, sticky sweat building up in time with the unrest in her stomach. She sat rigidly alongside her eldest sister, Christine, who was crying, and her little sister, Jane, who was not. There was a tenacious sort of melancholy floating about the room, accompanied by a symphony of sniffing and sighing (and the occasional sob, which came almost exclusively from across the room where Adelaide’s newly-widowed aunt sat).

“Get her a tissue, Jane, will you?” Adelaide whispered, beckoning towards Christine, whose eyeliner had begun to bleed down the side of her cheek. Jane nodded, her small figure beginning to work its way through the crowd. The stark blonde of her hair stood out amongst the black attire as she weaved around friends and family, clustered together in hushed conversations.

“Thank you,” Adelaide murmured when Jane returned, taking the tissue and using it to wipe away some of Christine’s tears. She tried her best to make this movement seem natural, but was aware of its awkwardness, and hoped Christine would take it from her hand. She did.

“Thanks,” Christine choked, blowing her nose. This produced a slight honking noise which Adelaide worked very hard not to laugh at. She had already gotten in trouble with her mother for doodling in the pages of her little black notebook, the pages of which she now ran her fingers over discreetly. She hadn’t intended any malice, simply seeking a distraction, but was (unkindly) informed that doodling at a wake is inappropriate. This was according to her mother, though, who thought lots of things were inappropriate, like open-toed shoes and rock music.

“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” Adelaide heard her mother whisper to a tall, curly-haired woman (a cousin, maybe? great aunt?). Adelaide couldn’t believe any of it herself. Though she wasn’t exactly close to her uncle, she had grown accustomed to his silent presence in her life. He had stood in the background of every birthday, graduation, and anniversary. She missed him in the same way you miss a drink once it reaches the bottom of your glass.

At the front of the room, a medium-sized TV cycled through pictures of Adelaide’s uncle, a mixture of portraits and selfies and candid photos taken by his friends. Adelaide thought she could see a bit of her sister, Christine, in his eyes. She had known him a little better. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t stop crying.

A few minutes later, when Adelaide felt she could no longer take the sniffling and whispers, she pushed herself up onto her feet and slipped away from the living room. She decided to head into the garage, the one place she assumed no one would go looking for her (if anyone went looking for her at all). The air was hot and musty, making her even more uncomfortable than she originally was, but she decided she preferred this discomfort to the discomfort of being surrounded by mourners.

In the corner of the dimly-lit garage stood a metal rolling cabinet, overflowing with tools and packets of nails and screws. Adelaide’s uncle had a profound interest in building and repairing, despite his steady job as a corporate lawyer. She remembered, suddenly, a time when he had taken her into the garage and showed her how to use a power drill. This memory somehow stirred some emotion in her, and she paced across the garage floor to more closely examine what had once been his belongings.

Messy, she thought as she rummaged through the top drawer. It was too full to close completely and didn’t seem to be organized in any way. The other drawers were a little less cluttered, becoming larger and larger as she worked her way down the cabinet. The final drawer was shut completely, and as Adelaide grasped its handle and pulled it forward, she found it was stuck.

No, not stuck, she observed, as she shook it back and forth. Locked.

Her eyes drifted to the keyhole at the upper right corner, confirming her thoughts. Adelaide, intrinsically curious, decided at once that she would do her best to open it up and gain the (now priceless) knowledge of its contents. She searched around for the key, or paper clips, sighing with frustration. Then, remembering the headache-inducing hairstyle her mother had forced her into, slipped a bobby pin out from her hair and inserted it into the keyhole.

Adelaide had never picked a lock in her fourteen years of life. Thus, there was no reason she would have been able to pick this one open. It did open, however, after a few seconds, with a satisfying click.

Eager as ever, she pulled the drawer open, the metal railing squeaking loud enough to make her wince. At first, in the dim light, she thought it was empty. As she looked closer, though, she found there was a small, gray metal box sitting at the back of the drawer. She pulled it out, running her fingers over its smooth, cold surface, and resisted the urge to press it against her forehead to cool herself down.

The box had only a small latch holding it shut, and Adelaide, now aware that what she was doing was wrong, turned so that her back perfectly faced the garage door. Another click resonated throughout the garage as she opened the box.

Oh, Adelaide thought. Oh, wow.

In the box were tens—no, hundreds— of slightly-damp pale green bills, some folded and some unfolded. The top few Adelaide held were small in value, ones and fives and tens and twenties. As she dug deeper into the box, though, she found a countless number of hundred dollar bills. She would soon learn, in the privacy of her bedroom at home, that the box contained roughly twenty-thousand dollars. For now, though, she stared in awe.

Adelaide had not come from money, nor had her family ever come into money. Her uncle, being a lawyer, had been the most financially successful person she had ever encountered, with a large house and fancy car and prepaid college savings accounts for both his children. They would not miss this money if it vanished. As a matter of fact, they likely did not know this money was here, tucked into a dark corner of their humid garage.

Adelaide slipped the box under the tiered dress she once despised so fervently, pressing her hand against the fabric to keep it up against the side of her thigh. She would not be caught. She’d make sure of it.

Adelaide kept the box (and its contents) nestled away into the furthermost corner of her closet floor. She did not permit herself to take more than twenty dollars at a time, as to not arouse any suspicion from her sisters or her friends. She planned, rather maturely, she thought, to save the majority of it for when she eventually pursued higher education.

In the meantime, though, the money did nothing more than offer her small morsels of happiness. She felt this happiness when she would treat her best friend to ice cream after school, and when she could afford to buy new colored pencils for drawing in her notebook, and when she could purchase her mother a slightly-more expensive Christmas gift and chalk it up to working more hours as a tutor at the local elementary school.

There was no mention of the money by anyone else in the family, at least to Adelaide’s knowledge. Many sleepless nights were spent wondering why it had been left there, or what it had been for. Even more sleepless nights were spent feeling guilty about taking it.

One night, during a game of truth-or-dare at a large-yet-intimate college party, Adelaide’s roommate asked,

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

Running her fingers along the chain of a necklace her uncle’s money paid for, Adelaide replied,

“I don’t know.”

But she did. And she would take that box to the grave.