I was wrong.
At the top of the staircase in our house, there has always been a narrow door leading to the attic. From the day we moved in, that door had a brass padlock on it. It wasn’t a flimsy thing. It was heavy and solid, the kind of lock that looked as though it belonged on a warehouse.
The first time I asked Helen about it, she smiled and said, “Just old junk from my parents’ house. Nothing worth digging through.”
Over the years, I brought it up now and then, mostly teasing. “One of these days I’m going to find treasure up there.”
“You’ll find dust and regret,” she would reply lightly. “Leave it be, Russ.”
And I did. I’ve never been the kind of man to rifle through my wife’s belongings. We all deserve a corner of the world that is ours alone. So I accepted her explanation: old furniture, boxes, moth-eaten coats.
