And then he said, “Why are you telling me this?

You’re thirty-four.”

And I said, “Because she didn’t.”

And my brother looked at the ground for about four seconds and then he said, “Yeah.

Okay,” and got in his car, and he has never mentioned it again, and I know for a fact that he knows the number.

Part Forty-Five: The Key

In the April I was emptying the desk in the front room at Oak Street and the bottom drawer would not close, and I took it all the way out, and behind it, at the back, was a small brass key with no label.

There was a number stamped into the metal.