She set it down and then picked it right back up, and I let her.

When she lifted the last of them, the corner of the hallway showed a gray tin box the size of a loaf of bread, pushed back against the baseboard, its brass catch gone green.

“There he is,” Martha said.

“I’ve been hunting for that since April.

Get the little key off my dresser, would you?

The blue dish.”

The key was smaller than my thumbnail.

Inside, under a folded piece of oilcloth, lay four rolled surveys with slack rubber bands and a spiral notebook in David’s father’s handwriting.