I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for a year, put the lights back on, and crept the rest of the way into town.

First National Trust was a fortress of limestone and brass. The manager met us at the door and started to say something about the storm, and then Grandpa spoke to him — quietly, briefly — and ten minutes later we were standing in the vault.

The manager turned his guard key and stepped back. Grandpa drew a brass key on a chain out from under his collar, turned it, and laid his palm flat on the scanner.

Green light. The box slid free.

Inside was a stack of immaculate originals: the true deed, his real and untampered will, and — I hadn’t expected this — a ledger. Cloth-bound, handwritten, decades of it.

“What is that?” I asked. My voice came back off the steel.