The Locks My Mother In Law Changed

Ransome died on a Sunday night at St. Agnes, two counties over, in a room that smelled like the inside of a filing cabinet. Heart. It had been failing for a year in the quiet way hearts do when the man attached to them refuses to slow down, and it finally gave out while I was holding his hand and a nurse named Pauline was adjusting a monitor that had already gone silent. I had not slept in my own bed in two nights. I had eaten exactly one vending machine sandwich. I had a bouquet of yellow roses on the passenger seat of my car, sent by the boys at the bike shop, wilting a little because nobody had thought to put them in water, and I had a house key in my coat pocket that I had used every day for eleven years.

That last night, Ransome had been more alert than he’d been in days. He squeezed my hand and told me to stop fussing with his blanket, and when I laughed despite myself he said it was good to hear, that I should laugh more once this was all over. I asked him what he meant by all over, meaning the hospital stay, meaning the recovery, and he just smiled and said something had already been handled and I shouldn’t worry about the house. I thought he was talking nonsense the way tired, sick men sometimes do at two in the morning. I did not know he was handing me the one piece of information that would matter most in the world four days later. By the time I understood what he meant, he could no longer explain it to me.

That morning, the key would not turn.