She didn’t answer. “What, Marla?” Her eyes opened. “A key.” The room went still. I could hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. Outside, a snowplow growled somewhere down the street. “How do you know?” She glanced toward Abby’s room. Then lowered her voice. “Because Tom gave it to me.”
I couldn’t have heard her correctly. “What?” “Three weeks before he died.” My hand went automatically to the pocket of my jeans. The outline of the key seemed suddenly enormous. “Tom gave you a key.” “Yes.” “Why?” “I don’t know.” “Liar.” “I don’t know everything.” “Then tell me what you do know.” Marla stood.
Her composure had returned in fragments, but there were cracks everywhere. “Your husband called me from the hospital.” “When?” “December second.” I knew the date instantly. Tom had been admitted the previous afternoon. His condition had deteriorated rapidly over the following week. “He asked me to come see him alone.” “You visited Tom without telling me?” “You were home with Abby.” “I visited him every day.”
“He specifically told me not to tell you.”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know.”
“Tom couldn’t stand you.”
Marla flinched.
It was cruel, but true.
Their relationship had never recovered after Marla accused him of being irresponsible when he quit a secure railway office job to start his small repair business.
Tom had called her “the human receipt.”
She had called him “a dreamer allergic to arithmetic.”
Family dinners had been delicate affairs.
“So why would he trust you with anything?”
“I asked him the same question.”
“And?”
Marla stared toward the window.
“He said because I was the one person who could keep something from you.”
That hurt more than I expected.
Not because it was insulting.
Because it was true.
Marla and I could barely keep a civil conversation going for ten minutes.
Tom would have known I would never voluntarily confide in her.
“What did he ask you to do?”
“He gave me the jacket.”
“The jacket?”
“It wasn’t Kayla’s originally.”
Another lie.
Of course.
“Whose was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“He had it in a bag. He gave me the bag and the key. He told me to hide the key somewhere nobody would look for it.”
“So you sewed it into a child’s coat?”
“I panicked.”
“You panicked for three weeks?”
“I forgot about it!”
Her voice cracked.
Then she lowered it again.
“I shoved the jacket into a storage bin with Kayla’s old clothes. Yesterday, when you were over and asked if I had anything Abby could wear, I grabbed the first decent coat I found.”
I stared at her.
“You forgot the key until this morning.”
Marla nodded.
“Then why didn’t you simply tell me?”
“Because Tom made me promise.”
“Tom is dead.”
Her eyes filled suddenly.
“So what?”
The question stopped me.
Marla rarely cried.
I had seen her cry at our father’s funeral and once when Kayla broke her arm at seven.
She blinked rapidly, angry at herself.
“He trusted me,” she whispered. “Maybe for the first time in his life.”
Something inside me softened despite everything.
Only slightly.
“What did he say the key opened?”
“He didn’t.”
“The tag says Box 314.”
Marla’s eyes snapped toward me.
“The tag?”
“Union Station.”
She shook her head.
“There wasn’t a tag when he gave it to me.”
A cold prickled down my arms.
“What?”
“The key was loose.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
I pulled it from my pocket.
Marla stared.
Her face went white.
The blue writing on the tag was ordinary enough.
But I knew the handwriting.
So did Marla.
Tom’s.
I had watched him write birthday cards, grocery lists, repair estimates, notes in Abby’s lunchbox.
The capital T always leaned forward.
His threes were flat across the top.
Tom had tied this tag onto the key sometime before giving it to Marla.
Which meant he had known exactly where it belonged.
Abby emerged from the hallway wearing her backpack.
“Mom, we’re going to be late.”
School.
Normal life.
I looked at the kitchen clock.
8:02.
There are moments when the world should stop but refuses.
Children still need to reach school.
Bills still arrive.
Coffee still cools in mugs.
I put the key back into my pocket.
“Marla, we’re not finishing this conversation now.”
“Give me the key.”
“No.”
“Jen.”
“It’s addressed to my husband.”
“He gave it to me.”
“And now I have it.”
Her expression hardened.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“Neither do you.”
For a second we faced each other like we had as teenagers, each waiting for the other to surrender.
Then Abby spoke.
“Can I keep the jacket?”
We both looked at her.
Marla laughed helplessly.
A small, broken sound.
“Keep it, kiddo.”
Abby brightened.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Marla turned toward me.
“But Jen?”
“What?”
