“That’s not fair.”
“Possession is very often unfair.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means finish breakfast.”
She rolled her eyes.
But she placed the key on the table.
For the rest of the morning I thought about throwing it away.
I had thought about that before.
Many times.
The key no longer opened the reading room.
When contractors widened the doorway, they removed the original mechanism entirely.
The brass was useless.
Its only function was memory.
And memory does not need metal.
Still, I put it back in the drawer.
I told myself I would decide later.
Later is a dangerous country.
Families hide entire generations there.
That afternoon Lily came to pick Ava up after her flight returned early.
Ava lasted thirty-seven seconds.
“Mom, you found Uncle Michael in a wall?”
Lily stopped halfway through removing her coat.
Her eyes found mine.
“You told her?”
“She found the key.”
Lily looked at Ava.
“What key?”
“The secret-door key.”
Lily looked back at me.
“You still have that?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer irritated her.
My daughter was forty then.
Married.
Two children.
A successful industrial designer who had somehow turned her childhood obsession with building things into a career designing hospital furniture and adaptive living spaces.
She had also inherited my least attractive trait.
She could smell avoidance.
“You do know.”
“Fine.”
“I kept it because I kept it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I’m sixty-eight. I have earned the right to occasionally be irrational.”
“No.”
Ava interrupted.
“Mom, did you give Uncle Michael pancakes?”
Lily stared.
“What?”
“When he was in the wall.”
“Oh.”
She looked at me again.
I shrugged.
“This is what you started.”
“I was eight.”
“You were still difficult.”
Ava pulled at her mother’s sleeve.
“What food?”
Lily thought.
“Bread. Chicken. Apples.”
“Grandpa forgot.”
“Grandpa forgets useful things and remembers things that annoy him.”
“Family talent,” I said.
Lily smiled.
Then she saw the seriousness behind my face.
“Ava, take your backpack to the car.”
“But—”
“Now.”
The tone changed.
Ava went.
When the front door closed, Lily looked toward my office.
“Give me the key.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s mine.”
“That’s what you told her?”
“Yes.”
“Dad.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Throw it away.”
“Why?”
She stared as if the answer were obvious.
“That thing locked him in.”
“No.”
“People locked him in.”
“The key is a piece of brass.”
“Then you shouldn’t care about throwing it away.”
That was unfair.
Which meant it was effective.
I sat on the edge of the hallway table.
“You want it gone?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because every time I see it, I’m eight.”
I had not expected that.
Lily looked toward the reading room.
“I know we turned it into something else.”
“I know all the therapy words.”
“I know objects don’t hold moral power.”
“But when I see that key, I remember standing outside the wall with a plate and thinking if I didn’t feed Uncle Michael he might die.”
My chest tightened.