He did not tell me I was too young to carry a key.

He did not put it on any chain I could not unhook myself.

I carried it inside and slid it into the small zippered pocket of my school backpack, right next to the crackers I still kept there every day, even now that breakfast was always waiting on the table — because some habits a child keeps long after she needs them, as quiet proof to herself of how far she has come.

The old brass padlock key stayed in the back of the kitchen drawer for years.

No one ever touched it again.

It did not need to be thrown away; it only needed to be powerless, and it was.

The new key stayed with me, in my pocket, where I could feel it — a small, plain, ordinary thing that a child could hold and use and never once be locked out of her own life by, which is, I have come to think, the whole of what anyone means when they say the word home.