I have opened it with that key perhaps forty times since, to get a rake out.

The number on it has nothing to do with the receipt.

There is no connection of any kind.

There never was.

I sat in the car outside that hardware shop and I was so humiliated that I could not drive for a minute, and then it turned into something else, and the something else is the only thing I actually learned in six months.

I had spent two weeks reading an object as a clue because it had a number on it, and the reason I did that is the exact same reason my father went through every drawer in that kitchen in October.