And I did not add a single word after it, though she paused in the doorframe, waiting for the apology that had always come before.

It did not come.

After a moment the door slammed, and she was gone, and my father crossed the kitchen and turned the deadbolt, and set her silver house key down on the table beside the little brass padlock key, the two of them together, both of them ours now.

I remember looking at those two keys on the table, the big silver one and the tiny brass one, lying side by side in the flat noon light, and feeling something I did not have a word for at ten and would call, now, the strange grief of a rescue.

Because Nana was not a monster in a story, however much it would tidy things to say she was.

She was my grandmother.