Page 48 of You Belong Here

We were tucked behind the closed door of my father’s office, the phone resting on the desk between us like a ticking bomb.

“She said she dropped the phone in the woods,” Trevor said, not for the first time, going back to his core point from the middle of the night, before we retreated to our separate rooms, pretending to sleep, trying to work it out on our own.

Now he was showered and overcaffeinated and pacing the tiny square of the room, making me even more anxious.

My eyes trailed him back and forth from my spot behind the desk.

There wasn’t enough room in here for his pent-up energy.

“She said she lost it, ” I whispered. She’d been very clear on that point. She’d said it to me and to the police.

“And it was just… in the dumbwaiter?” he asked, voice rising.

I nodded, peering at the closed door behind him, hoping Delilah hadn’t come down for breakfast yet, eavesdropping on the conversation. No matter how he tried to spin it, there was no way he could map a way out, bring us to a safe and comfortable understanding.

“Maybe we missed something. Maybe she was…”

But we were talking ourselves in circles.

I stood, then abruptly swiped the phone off the desk. “I’m going to ask her.”

Trevor stopped pacing, stared at me silently. Like this was something he hadn’t considered.

“She’d tell us if she wanted to,” he said. Like he didn’t want to push her into revealing a truth he might not be ready to hear. This was the first time I could recall him ever verbally disagreeing with my parenting decisions.

“Trevor, someone is dead. Adalyn is dead. I think she was harassing Delilah, stealing her things, making her feel unsafe in the dorms, and this house, and—” I stopped myself before I went too far down the track.

“And what ?” he asked quietly. His hands were shaking, and I didn’t know whether it was from the caffeine or the horror of the unfinished sentence.

He reached for me then, his hands circling my wrists. “Please,” he whispered, resting his forehead against mine. “Please tell me this isn’t happening.”

I took an unsteady breath in. “We really need to ask her,” I whispered. “We can’t help until we know.”

He stepped back, releasing me.

I strode through the house to the narrow stairs behind the kitchen. “Delilah?” I called from the place my mother used to call my name. “Are you up?”

I waited, like always, for the sound of her footsteps above, rapid and frantic, realizing she had overslept. But there was only silence. “Delilah!”

I felt Trevor standing in the kitchen behind me. “Beckett,” he said gently. I turned, saw him standing beside the round table, holding a piece of paper in his hand. He frowned, eyes skimming the page. “She went to school.”

“She what ?” I asked. I strode across the room, took the note from Trevor’s outstretched hand.

She’d written lengthwise across a sheet torn off the grocery list pad in my parents’ junk drawer: Needed clothes. Went to campus. Classes are in session today and I can’t miss. —D

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said through clenched teeth.

She could’ve easily knocked on the office door before she left.

Could’ve called through the house to find me—Lord knows she’d done that enough.

She could’ve called or texted us a heads-up.

I knew the fact that she didn’t was only because she didn’t want me to tell her no.

Delilah always believed in asking for forgiveness instead of permission.

I felt my stomach drop, my throat constrict. How dare she just leave a note at a time like this—

And I was embarrassed that Trevor saw this—how she so obviously didn’t want to talk to me first. That he was witnessing my failings as a parent up close. And that maybe Delilah and I didn’t have as strong a relationship as I’d always believed.

I’d thought I knew her better than this. I’d thought our relationship was better than this.

I took a deep breath. “I’m going,” I said, leaving the phone behind on the table.

He reached for my elbow as I pivoted for the exit. “Beckett, think about this,” he said. “Slow down for a minute.”

But I’d already thought it through. I’d already decided. I needed to get onto campus anyway. There were things I had to check; something I had to know.

I stared up at him, wide-eyed.

“Don’t go in angry,” he said, releasing me.

“I’m not angry, Trevor.” No, that was covering for something else. “I’m terrified.”

Same as him.

“Give me a second to get ready, and I’ll come with you,” he said.

But I needed to be there alone. The skeleton key didn’t belong in this house. It was something Trevor didn’t understand—and it was dangerous.

“Stay here in case the police come back,” I said. I pointed emphatically at the cell phone. “Do not let anyone see that. Do not let anyone inside. No one.”

There was a noticeable security increase at the school. Golf carts driven by personnel in orange vests, patrolling the roads and sidewalks. Campus police, in uniform, a visible presence. A reminder—or a promise—that the students were safe.

At first I couldn’t believe that school was in session.

Someone had died at the edge of the property.

But Adalyn wasn’t a student, and there were tragedies everywhere.

It was Monday. Parent weekend was rapidly approaching.

It was best to keep the students occupied rather than to let them sit in their rooms with the knowledge of what had happened; with the realization of how close they each might’ve come.

They needed routine.

The only place I could park without a tag was in the visitor lot on lower campus, designated for admissions. It was close to the start of the admissions tours, in the back lobby of Beckett Hall.

Luckily, I had arrived on campus a few minutes before the start of the ten a.m. classes. There were so many students walking across the academic quad that it was easy enough to blend in.

From the walkway, I looked to the top of the arched doors and saw a small black device pointing down. That must’ve been the camera that had caught Delilah entering the building just before midnight.

I knew it was taking freeze-frame pictures of everyone as they passed. I knew the photos would be stored for security to piece through if anything should happen.

I kept my head down and slipped in at the back of a larger group stepping inside. Voices echoed through the front atrium, carrying snippets of student conversation.

They think she was running from something and didn’t see the hole—

Someone pushed—

No way, definitely an accident. There were no lights out there—

I broke away from the group, lingering at the edge of the atrium, sliding along the curved wall.

The entire room was brimming with people and conversation and activity.

Some groups had clustered together, sipping coffee, leaning close in conversation, while others moved down the hall in single-minded focus.

I scanned the crowd for a familiar face. No Delilah. But I wasn’t here for her yet anyway.

No one seemed to notice me. I traced the perimeter, dragging my hand against the texture of the cool curved wall like I’d done long ago.

But now the walls were smoothed over with plaster and fresh paint.

I stopped at the outline of the old tunnel door, which blended into the wall so well that only the keyhole was visible.

The silver chain I’d found in the dumbwaiter shaft was currently wrapped around my wrist, the skeleton key clenched in my palm. I leaned sideways against the door like I was just passing time. Then I slipped the key into the lock.

I had to know if it still worked. So many years had passed since I’d last seen it. The key had disappeared with Adalyn twenty years earlier—or so I’d thought.

I peered around the atrium once more; the campus police had said there were no cameras inside, only at the main entrance of each building.

No one else in the room seemed to be paying attention.

I turned the key to the right and felt the bolt click open, the seal of the door give slightly, in a breath. Quickly, I turned the key back, sealing the door, securing the bolt.

Was it possible that Delilah had found this key somewhere? Was that why she had sneaked into Beckett Hall in the night? To access the tunnels that I’d pointed out to her at orientation?

I pictured Delilah entering Beckett Hall at midnight. Cliff had said most of the entrances were sealed off, but not all. Not this one. Was this a way for her to avoid the cameras? To slip through campus unnoticed.

It was the simplest explanation. What else could she have been in here for?

Not the library. She said she’d been staying at the nearby theater, where she could enjoy the quiet she craved. What was worth the trip here just before midnight?

My hands shook. The phone in the dumbwaiter. The skeleton key stashed below. My parents’ house, full of evidence—

I had to get the key back where it belonged. It wasn’t safe in that house, and it wasn’t safe in my possession.

The atrium had started to empty out, a stream of students heading down the hall. I followed them past the admissions door and the other administrative office where Cliff must be.

I continued with the flow of bodies, veering up the old steps with the iron rails that were probably original to the structure.

Half the students filtered out at the second-floor landing, where my mother used to teach.

But I continued on to the third, where my father’s office used to be—beside the archive room.

The doors up here all appeared the same: dark, heavy wood, with inset glass that provided a view into the room beyond.

A buzzer sounded from somewhere in the halls, something dull and grating—not quite the chiming of the bell tower but a marker of time for class. I watched as the rest of the students disappeared behind various wooden doors, the hallway falling empty.

I peered through the glass window into the archive space, a small room with a domed ceiling and wooden four-person tables with green wired lamps for studying. There was a single student in there now, headphones on, bent over his laptop with an old book open beside him.

Inside, shelves were stacked with record books and blueprint scrolls.

And framed on the walls: the sketch of the original campus; the picture of the first all-boys’ graduating class, in black and white; a portrait of the first college president.

And then there were the drawers that you could slide open but were covered in glass, like in a museum.

Inside which this skeleton key had long been kept.

My father always carried the key to the archives on a lanyard around his neck, along with his faculty ID card and office key.

The day of our final howling, I’d asked to borrow it from him during lunch.

He’d handed it over without blinking. But I’d gone to the archive room instead, unlocked the case, and taken the skeleton key so we could use the tunnels as a shortcut to the ruins of the old president’s house.

I was sure no one would notice before I returned it; people rarely sifted through the archive drawers. I’d planned to slip it back behind the locked glass the next day, but I never got the chance.

Now I opened the door, and the scent brought me immediately back: old books and wood polish, leather binding and handmade paper. This was the scent of my childhood. I’d loved to explore while my parents worked, had been a permanent fixture on campus.

The student in headphones didn’t look up from the table as I passed, heading to the back, where the drawers were built into an antique-looking dresser.

I pulled the handle of the bottom drawer: A layer of thick glass protected what lay inside, with a locked metal latch where it connected with the wood. It was something I pictured whenever I was in a pharmacy, peering at the medicines kept in locked cases.

I ran my fingers along the surface. Below the glass, each item was labeled with a nameplate.

The original school bell, dark bronze and cracked; the deed for the land purchase—and then I froze.

The nameplate said Tunnel Key, but the space below wasn’t empty.

There was another key in its place. Something that looked similar to the original: ornate looping, tarnished silver, a ridge of teeth.

But the color was off. The pattern different.

It wasn’t the real key.

The real key was currently in the purse slung across my chest. The only explanation for this replacement was if someone else had noticed the original was missing.

My breath caught in my throat. There was only one person who would’ve understood how those men had gotten into the tunnels.

My father.

He knew I had lied when I asked for his lanyard, or he’d figured it out soon after.

He’d known, and he’d said nothing. To cover for me, he’d found a way to replace it with a good enough replica that nobody would look twice.

I wondered if he’d known immediately, when the police started questioning the security guards about their keys, asking how the men could’ve possibly gotten into the tunnels .

Or whether he’d discovered it years later, as he was showing a guest around the archives, the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place—

“Excuse me!” A deep voice reverberated through the circular room.

I spun from the cabinet, caught. A young man wearing a ball cap and a campus security vest stood at the other end of the stacks.

Dill, the same guard Violet had been trying to talk her way past yesterday.

He was Beverly’s son—a local. Like my parents said, most of the people who worked here were. “You aren’t allowed in here.”

But there was no sign. No lock. Nothing to indicate I’d done something intentional. “Sorry, I was just looking around.”

“You can’t be in the buildings unless you’re a student,” he said.

“I’m a parent,” I said.

He seemed unmoved. The keys on his hip jangled as he took a step closer. “That doesn’t matter. Right now this is a closed campus…”

They must’ve been trying to keep journalists off the property. Or people wandering in from town for a closer look.

“I’m going,” I said, hands held up. “I’m just waiting to meet my daughter.”

Dill insisted on escorting me out. As we walked down to the first-floor hall, I caught sight of Cliff Simmons through the window of his department office. He turned at our movement out here—like I was a shadow in the corner of his eye.

Our gazes locked for a moment, his head swiveling slightly as I passed, his expression turning dark. Without breaking eye contact, he reached for his office phone and slowly raised it to his ear.