He placed it on the kitchen table between our coffee cups without saying anything.
I looked at it.
“What is that?”
My father sat across from me.
He was fifty now, although the last few years had aged him more than the ten before them. There was gray in his beard, deep lines beside his eyes, and a slight stiffness in his right shoulder that came from an old injury he had stopped pretending didn't bother him.
He looked toward the window.
“Something I should have given you a long time ago.”
I picked up the key.
“A storage unit?”
“No.”
“A safe?”
He nodded slowly.
“Your mother had a second safety deposit box.”
I stared at him.
The room seemed to become quieter.
We had been through this before.
The old wedding album.
The hidden memory card.
The bank records.
The photographs that proved my stepmother had known my family long before she married my father.
The financial scheme that had destroyed my mother's final months.
The brake-line evidence.
The investigation.
The confessions.
The court proceedings.
Every time I thought we had found the last buried piece of my mother's life, another one appeared.
I set the key down.
“Dad.”
“I know.”
“No. I don't think you do.”
He lowered his eyes.
“I understand why you're upset.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I have spent three years trying to build a relationship with you where I don't have to wonder what you're hiding.”
He nodded.
“And now you're handing me another key.”
“I know.”
“Another secret.”
“Yes.”
I stood from the table.
My father did not try to stop me.
That was one of the things therapy had taught him.
There had been a time when he would have followed me immediately, explaining himself before I had time to decide what I felt.
Now he remained seated.
He waited.
I walked to the window.
Outside, the neighborhood looked exactly as it always had.
Neatly trimmed lawns.
Clean sidewalks.
Two children riding bicycles past the mailbox.
A delivery truck moving slowly around the corner.
Nothing about the ordinary morning suggested another piece of my mother's story was about to enter my life.
“Did you know about this the whole time?” I asked.
“No.”
I turned.
“When did you find out?”
“Last Thursday.”
“How?”
“The bank contacted your grandmother.”
“Why didn't she call me?”
“She wanted me to explain.”
I laughed once.
It wasn't a happy sound.