He looked puzzled, but after a moment, he nodded.
“All right. Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”
I wanted to believe those words would protect us.
I had no idea how complicated the next morning would become.
The Iron Box in the Cellar
I barely slept that night.
At six o’clock, while the house was still quiet, I took the brass key and went downstairs.
The cellar smelled of damp earth, old apples, and the firewood Stanisław had stacked every autumn. A narrow window let in a thin strip of gray morning light.
I searched behind the shelves, beneath a workbench, and beside the old coal bin.
Nothing.
Then I remembered something my father-in-law had once told me.
“People look for important things where they expect to find them,” he had said while watching me search for a missing medicine bottle. “That is why they so often overlook what is right in front of them.”
