Then you remember the key.
It is exactly where she said, taped beneath the piano bench. Your fingers shake as you peel it free. Upstairs, for the first time, you open the back closet and unlock the metal box.
Inside are papers, letters, and photographs. There is also a smaller envelope addressed to you.
This one is shorter.
In case you were curious, yes, I knew long before you did that you would never steal from me. You looked at things the way poor people do when they understand the weight of replacing them, not the way greedy people do when calculating resale. It is an important distinction.
You laugh aloud in the empty house, then have to sit down because the sound turns into tears faster than expected.
The box contains old family records, the deed history, Arthur’s Navy medals, a little jewelry, and bundles of letters. Some are from her children when they were young and still wrote as if love were a place. Some are from Arthur during deployment. One is from the youngest son she once mentioned, except it turns out Thomas was the youngest and the goodness she had seen in him had belonged mostly to a version of him that did not survive adulthood intact.
