At first, early in our marriage, I had teased him about it. “A secret fortune?” I’d ask. Or, “Are you hiding a second wife in there?”
He would laugh softly and say, “Just old paperwork. Nothing interesting.”
After a while I stopped asking. Marriage teaches you where the walls are. Not the real walls, the emotional ones. The places your spouse gently turns away from, and you love them enough not to follow. I assumed it was tax files, old job records, maybe his late parents’ documents. Something boring. Something private, but harmless.
On the tenth day after the funeral, I called a locksmith.
I told myself it was practical. I told myself I had legal reasons. I told myself a widow opening a locked closet in her own home was not some kind of betrayal.
Still, when the locksmith knelt in front of the door with his tools, my hands wouldn’t stay still.
It took less than two minutes.
A metallic click. A shift in the handle. Then the door eased open with a dry little creak, as if it had been waiting years to complain.
The locksmith glanced inside, then back at me. “You want me to leave it open?”
“Yes,” I said, though my throat had gone tight.
He left. I stood at the end of the hall for a full minute before I stepped forward.
The closet was not full of junk.
