Eureka

By Em Arata-Berkel

That morning, Jane found the key in her mailbox next to a note that thanked her for waiting. She brought it inside, and from between stacks of yellowed newspapers with headlines insisting ‘SEARCH CONTINUES,’ she pulled out a locked music box. The key fit.

It’d taken her brother weeks to search their mother’s storage unit, but just as she’d hoped, the old Best Friends Forever box held two locks of hair. In an accompanying photo, her teenaged mother grinned with a friend who’d never shown up to graduation. At least now they could ID the old bones found beneath the bleachers.