Next, I opened a browser and searched for an emergency, overnight locksmith.

“You need every lock changed? Tonight?” the groggy dispatcher asked, a hint of suspicion in his voice.

“Every point of entry. Immediately.” Sixty minutes later, a battered gray pickup idled in my driveway. The locksmith, a man pushing sixty with weary eyes and calloused, grease-stained hands, surveyed the brick house, then looked at my stoic expression.

“Everything all right, ma’am?” “No,” I answered—the absolute truth. “But it’s going to be.” He didn’t pry. For the next two hours, the screech of his drill fractured the suburban silence of my quiet cul-de-sac.

The front door, the garage man-door, the sliding back patio mechanism, the basement deadbolt. Every old brass tumbler went into a heavy canvas bucket.

Every newly cut, jagged key was dropped directly into my waiting palm. “You want duplicate sets made?” he asked, wiping his brow. “No.” “You’re absolutely sure?”