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Still in a daze, she reached for the handle again This time the safe yawned open with a creak after at least five years of inactivity As she pushed the door back, tears bubbled up in her eyes again

Before he had died, Reverend Crane had told her on the mainland she had been an awful person, a thief and a ht her here, so she ht be "purified" by The Way Sa at the safe, she began to have her doubts Who else but a thief would kno to unlock a safe without knowing the coht about that, then perhaps he had been right about everything

She tried to shake these thoughts away She remembered the last five years on Eternity She hadn't stolen so ood and responsible, Miss Brighaiven her it couldn't have changed who she was inside, could it?

Once her latest batch of tears had faded into hiccups again, Sah the contents of the safe It didn't take long for her to understand Pryde hadn't hidden any kind of blackmail in here Instead, she saw boxes full of jewelry, coins, and even a container of gold teeth Pryde had taken all of this fro it to fund his adventures on thein her stoht

As with the clothes, the coins in the safe dated froold coin with the crude profile of a man on it Someone had scratched '1642' into the coin That had been over three hundred fifty years ago! The most recent coin was a silver one-a quarter, her es of the coin between her fingers Like the ancient coin, the quarter had a profile of a man on the front On the back she saw the words, "United States of America"

Those words seemed very familiar to her She must have come from the United States of Aht her here She tucked the quarter into a pocket of her jeans to study it later

At the top of a box near the front of the safe, she found so unusual It was a chain made not of silver like some of the coins but a dull metal like the safe itself A pendant shaped like half a heart cut in broken edges down thefrom the chain She turned the pendant over to see the words 'BE FRIE FOR' carved into the uage?