I closed my fingers around the envelope and asked how she knew about it. Claudine Fortier looked at the floor and said her father had once eaten at my grandmother’s table. He had spent forty years chasing one recipe, a pepper sauce his own mother had lost. “She refused him four times,” Claudine said.

I peeled the envelope open on the doorstep. Inside was a bank key and a letter in my grandmother’s hand. “Leon, the house will make your cousins comfortable and unhappy,” it began. “The tin will make you rich, if you are brave enough to share it.” Below the letter was one line: “Box 212, Royal Trust, King Street.” Claudine’s face went white.