Gabriel looked at the brass key.
“I was there the day he admitted he was afraid.”
That was new to me.
In my memory Dad had died suddenly, almost without warning.
Mother had always said the doctors tried everything, but there had been no time.
Now Gabriel told me Dad had been making appointments for months, quietly hoping treatment would work.
“He didn’t want you children carrying that worry before you had to,” Gabriel said.
“He didn’t tell many people.
He trusted me because he knew I understood what an illness could do to a family.”
I was furious at the thought that a stranger had known my father’s fear when I had not.
Then I remembered I had been eight.
He had probably still been helping with my spelling words while privately considering how to say goodbye.
“Why did he give you a key?”
“He needed someone who could keep a promise without making it into a grand event.
