I Kept the Key

I had kept that as well.

I had kept all of it.

I bent down and set the brass key at the base of his headstone, just beneath his name, where the morning sun had begun to reach it.

And then I straightened up, and turned toward the light, and walked home without looking back.

I did not need the key anymore, and that was why I could leave it.

For a year it had been a thing I carried — a weight against my collarbone, a reminder, a job unfinished.