Locked. Hidden away in a storage room he rarely used. No one ever asked what was inside. Not me. Not my mother. Even she—his wife—had learned long ago not to question certain boundaries. But that day, something was different. Curiosity overcame the quiet fear she had learned to live with.
The day before, she had searched his office.
No documents. No money. Nothing that explained where he had been going or why he had become so distant. Only the same object, wrapped carefully and placed where important things are kept. That absence—of explanations, of normality—troubled her more than the object itself.