I looked down at the passenger seat where the heavy silver key lay.

The brass tag attached to it had a handwritten address: *12 Miller’s Cove, Lakeville*.

But as the streetlights swept across the front of the key, I noticed something else.

There was a small, circular crest engraved near the top of the bow.

It was a shield with three stars and a diagonal stripe.

My breath caught in my throat.

I had seen that exact crest before.

It was on a small, rusted metal box my mother had kept in her bedroom closet.

She had always told me never to touch that box.

After she died, I had put it in my own closet, unable to bring myself to throw it away.

I had never found the key to it.

The key in my hand looked like it would fit the lock on that box.

And I remembered the old receipt I had found in her dresser.

It was for a safety deposit box at the Provident Bank on Tremont Street.

The receipt had listed the same box number that was lightly scratched into the back of this silver key.