Hayden

Lavender.

London

I was in Alana's bedroom, looking through everything I could possibly look through. I did stop to look at a couple of pictures that were of me and Alana when we were kids. I wanted to take them but I didn't want to show any signs that I was here. I would do it the right way and see if I was allowed to take anything of hers.

I searched between her sheets and in the pillowcases. All I found was a pink vibrator that I almost picked up. Changing my tactics, I decided to look under the bed but it was spotless. Going through several drawers, I found nothing out of the ordinary. It was just the usual things like shirts, underwear, and summer clothes. Raising my eyebrow, I knew that it was time to search the closet.

In the closet, I went through all the clothes as I checked the pockets of her jeans and anything else that had a damn pocket. I found nothing and it was pissing me off.

"Hayden, did you find anything yet?" I called out into the living room.

"Girl, I ain't find shit. I even stuck my hand up the fireplace," Hayden said as she searched through a stack of papers.

"What's in those papers?" I asked.

"Nothing actually. I was hoping something would jump out but there's nothing. Wait a minute. Have you seen this?" Hayden asked while looking at a paper that was turning yellow.

"What is that?" I asked her. When I got to where she was standing, I saw that it wasn't any old paper, it was actually a picture.

"Who is that?" Hayden asked.

"It's Alana's mother and her husband, Gary," I responded.

"Husband? Annabella had a husband?"

I nodded my head. "Yeah. He's Alana's father."

"I wonder if he knows about Alana's death," Hayden commented as she looked at the picture.

"I doubt it. Him and Alana barely knew each other. He ran off on her mother and married somebody else. It happened when we were really little. Her mother was depressed ever since Gary left," I said.

"Has he been back to talk to Alana since he's been gone?"

I shook my head. "Never. He sent her a card for her birthday a few years back though. I wonder if it's still here." I looked through the papers again to see if I could find the birthday card. It was something Alana held close to her. To her, it meant that her father still cared about her even though he left her and her mother behind.

"What are you looking for London?" Hayden asked me.

"The card. He left her a card with an address on it. He lives in California," I said as I tried to remember where the fuck she put that damn card.

"So what are we gonna do? We just gonna get his address so we can go to California and tell him that his daughter is gone?"

I rolled my eyes. "Are you really that dense? Don't you know what this means Hayden?"

Hayden gave me a confused look and I sucked my teeth. For Hayden to have been the brains for most of this operation, she was acting like the dummy.

"I need to find that damn card," I said. I pressed my hands against my forehead as I tried to remember where it was. "Start looking around. It's a light blue envelope. It says Gary Lee on it." Hayden immediately started looking. I helped her until I remembered where it was.

I went into the kitchen and looked in all the cabinets. After looking in the last one, I opened it to see snacks. There were several cookies and cakes and any other sweet treats you could name. This was the vault. When Alana was sad or upset, she opened this cabinet to make her happy. What everybody didn't know was that there was a part of the cabinet that was broken on the bottom shelf.