Verna stepped through the sagging porch door without her cane, ran her palm along the kitchen doorframe, and stopped at the pantry. “Sixty-one years ago, I married a man named Elias Larkin in this very room,” she said quietly. “This was my house.” I had worked in that kitchen for weeks and never known. She knelt slowly, pressed two fingers against a floorboard, and it lifted with a soft creak, revealing a metal biscuit tin wrapped in oilcloth.

“I hid this the week the county took the place,” she whispered. “Nobody in the family ever knew, not even Gene.” Tires crunched in the driveway. Through the window, I saw Gene’s truck, with Carol in the passenger seat, both of them staring at the house with stricken faces. Verna closed her hand around the tin and said, “Good. They need to hear this too.”