The brown prescription bottle from the pharmacy on Main Street had the forty-five-dollar copay sticker stuck crooked across the dosage directions.

My father set his glass of tap water down on the bedside table, right next to a thirty-eight-dollar receipt for an oil change on his Buick LeSabre.

“He will come looking for the brass key before the grass takes root,” Dad said.

He reached under his left pillow, his hand moving slowly and deliberately, and pulled out a heavy brass key hanging from a thin steel chain.

He pressed the cold metal into my palm and closed my fingers over it one by one.

“Promise me you will not open that safe without Samuel Price standing in the room,” he said.

I cleared my throat gently and smoothed the dark green fabric of my skirt down over my knee.

“Julian said he was coming by after his dentist appointment this afternoon.”

“Good,” Dad said.

His voice carried the dry, clipped authority of forty years on the shop floor.

“Julian needs to be standing right beside you when the steel door swings open.”

He rested his head back against the propped pillows and looked toward the corner of his bedroom.

“I bought a new desk lamp for the study last Tuesday,” he said, his voice dropping an octave.

“It has one of those high-definition lenses built into the neck.

Mind you leave it plugged into the wall socket.”

I looked down at the brass key in my hand.

The bit was thick and notched on both edges, heavy enough to pull the thin steel chain taut between my fingers.

“What is inside the safe, Dad?”