Chapter 4: The Old Key

"I need to see inside my parents' house," I said, "when nobody's home."

Nathan didn't ask why.

"When?"

"Saturday. They're at church until noon."

"Where do I stand?"

"At the corner, in your truck," I said. "If Colin drives by, text me."

He took out his phone and held it toward me.

"Put your number in. I want it to be yours I'm waiting on, not a hospital."

I typed it with one thumb.

He saved it under a name I couldn't see.

On Saturday Colin said he had a client breakfast, and kissed my hair on the way out, and I watched his taillights turn off our street.

Nathan was already parked at the corner of my parents' block in Bellevue.

I walked up the drive in a gray coat with my hands in my pockets.

The key was still under the ceramic frog by the steps.

My mother had never moved it, not in thirty years.

I let myself in.

The house smelled like cardamom, black pepper and a pot of something left on the stove.

Spicy.

I had grown up in this house on plain rice and butter, because my mother said I couldn't take heat, and she had always been right.

Now every surface of the kitchen was lined with jars of chili crisp and a rack of hot sauces.

One of them had a strip of tape on it with a name in my mother's handwriting.

"Cor."

I put it back.

Family photographs hung all the way up the staircase wall.

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