The woman looked down to her hands, the shining metal lay cool in her open palm.

Tears formed in her eyes, tracing the grooves of the key with her fingertip.

“I’m moving out Mom,” she had said.

“Alright, when?”

“Today.”

Her youngest . . . gone. Now all she had was a big empty house and a big empty room where her daughters had slept since they were in diapers.

The oldest had left without a goodbye, moved to some tiny country in Europe, the name she couldn’t pronounce.

And now the little one gone, off to Venice with her boyfriend. How long that would last she wasn’t sure, but had a vague feeling her baby was gone for good.

She’d had the key since she was twelve. Well, not this exact key (in her existence, she’d lost four), but a key just like it.

“Now, Andrea. A key is a special thing to have, and you’ve got to keep it safe.”

How many times had she said that? Well, it hadn’t worked. The first key was lost on the way home from sixth grade.

Andrea had waited on the porch for an hour until her older sister’s bus came and she could get into the house.

The second key had been lost at a friend’s house, in the ‘sleepover madness’. Her husband had yelled for that.

The third and final key had been lost at the girls’ dad’s funeral. She had a nagging suspicion that Andrea slipped it into her father’s open coffin when no one was looking.

This was the fourth. She’d given it to Andrea just a week after the funeral. And now, three years later, she was getting it back.

Tears slipped down her cheeks as she held the key to her heart.