Chapter 23: The Iron Key

Massimo made the coffee on Monday morning, and it was terrible.

He stood at my stove in yesterday's shirt with the pot in both hands, frowning at it.

"It's brown," I said.

"That's the one requirement."

"It's also solid."

He poured me a cup.

I drank half of it, out of love, and put it down.

"Too much?" he said.

"You used four times the grounds."

"The lady at the shop said bold."

"The lady at the shop meant the beans."

He laughed, and kissed me against the counter, and I was late for the first time in three years of working at the clinic.

My supervisor looked up when I came in at nine thirty.

"Rough weekend?" she said.

"A family wedding."

"You have family?"

"A few," I said. "It turns out I have a lot."

She went back to her screen, and I opened my first claim of the day.

It was a relief, a plain pile of codes and dates, and I did not think about boats until lunch.

At noon a black car waited outside, and I got in and rode to the townhouse.

My grandfather was in the kitchen, in his shirtsleeves, stirring a pot.

"You cook," I said.

"Badly. Your mother taught me. She said I could not be trusted with a knife and she was right."

He wiped his hands and took something out of his waistcoat pocket.

It was an iron key, black and heavy, as long as my palm.

"I carried this for twenty years," he said. "It opened the gate. I could not throw it away, and I could not bear to look at it."

He pressed it into my hand.

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