I held it up to the window, the metal glinting in the pale light. I touched my silver wedding band with my other hand, a habit that had stayed with me through thirty-six years of marriage whenever my thoughts began to drift toward things I could not explain. We did not have any locked boxes or padlocks in the house, except for the heavy green filing cabinet under the desk.
The cabinet was a retired piece of county property, dented at the corners and smelling faintly of old grease. Troy had used the top drawer for our joint tax returns, the house deed, and our children’s immunization records, leaving it unlocked so I could file our monthly utility bills. The key did not fit the lock on the top drawer; the keyhole was too small, designed for a different shape entirely.
The bottom drawer had been locked since the day he brought it home in the back of his truck.
