Chapter 5 - THE SILVER KEY
I had kept my grandmother's key in a box of old photographs in Los Angeles.
I called my neighbor, Elena, and asked whether she could check that my apartment was secure.
I did not tell her about the key.
My parents still had a spare key to the apartment from the year I traveled constantly for work.
I had intended to retrieve it a hundred times.
Every time, my mother told me I was being dramatic.
Elena sent a picture of my front door.
There were fresh scratches beside the lock.
I called a locksmith and arranged to have it changed before I returned.
Then I called the building manager and learned that my father had appeared there the previous evening claiming an urgent family emergency.
He had asked to be let into my unit.
The manager refused.
I was grateful and sickened at once.
At the same time, Maya was looking into my grandmother's estate.
My grandmother, Rose Bennett, had owned a small house in Palos Verdes and invested carefully for decades.
I remembered weekends spent in her garden and the smell of rosemary on her hands.
My father always said the house had been sold to cover medical expenses.
Maya found a deed showing that title had transferred shortly before Rose's death.
The receiving entity was not a family member.
It was Pacific Meridian Holdings.
My mother had told me the company meant nothing to her.
Now the name appeared at the center of our family's oldest mystery.
I sat on the edge of the bed and thought of Rose's last words.
She hadn't asked me to obey.
She had asked me to keep something safe.
When Maya called again, she sounded guarded.
I found a probate filing, she said.
You were named in an earlier version of your grandmother's estate plan.
How much?
I don't know yet.
But the earlier document appears to have been replaced less than two weeks before she died.
I asked who witnessed the replacement.
One witness was your mother.
I closed my eyes.
The room tilted around me.
For years, my family had mocked me for asking questions about the house.
They said grief had confused my memory.
They said I was greedy for caring about money that had never belonged to me.
A new email appeared while Maya was speaking.
It contained a photograph of the silver key on a table I recognized.
My own kitchen table.
Below it were four words.
May you like
WE FOUND IT FIRST.
