The spare she’d had cut right after Jake and I got married. “Mom will keep one,” she’d said, “in case you two lose yours.”
She set it on the shoe rack beside the door.
“I won’t need this anymore.”
“You can leave it there,” I said. “The day you’re willing to knock, it’s still a key. The day you’re not — it’s just a piece of old metal.”
She looked at the key for a few seconds. Then she turned, went down the steps, and walked along the driveway to her car.
The car sat there for a moment. Then it pulled away slowly.
She never looked back.
The guests slowly started talking again, like none of that had ever happened.
Jake came up beside me. “I should’ve said something a long time ago.”
I didn’t say it was okay. Not right away. I held this ground on my own. I built this rule on my own. It was going to take him a long time to show me that the words he found today weren’t just the heat of the moment.
