if my theory doesn’t pan out, okay?”
“Sure. Maybe give me a call if you find out, okay? Just to keep us in the loop?”
“Absolutely. I have to run.”
I went back out to my car, feeling pretty stupid, but also fairly sure I was on the right track. I paused before I hit the unlock button, and decided to follow upon my paranoid feeling. Getting down on my hands and knees, I looked under the car for anything that shouldn’t have been there. While this might have been par for the course for some of my colleagues who worked in more dangerous parts of the world, I wasn’t sure what a car bomb would look like. Of course, I’d just driven, but just on the off chance that it was something in the key that triggered it…well, just better to work with the paranoia.
I didn’t notice anything unusual, nothing new or shiny or clean that might have been the tip-off, so I got back up, and dusted myself off. I’d half convinced myself that I was really losing my mind, just as everyone kept telling me I was, but I stepped off a ways and made sure there was no one else around before I pressed the button.
I heard a faint click.
My car was now unlocked. I was sure that I’d locked it before I went into the coffee shop. I always locked it.
I tried locking the car, with the remote that I’d found in the coffee shop.
It locked. The alarm armed.
I walked around the car, ascertaining that it was in fact mine. There was my WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM MAKE HISTORY bumper sticker and my sticker supporting the Democratic presidential ticket. In the backseat was a shovel and milk crate full of artifacts to study at home. In the front seat was my collection of empty water bottles.
I took out my keys, held one against its counterpart on the carabiner: There was no mistaking this. Somehow, the key to my car—or a copy of it—was left at CaféNation. The coffee shop I stopped by at least five times a week, where they knew my orders by heart. A key to my car, on a key chain that I’d been automatically drawn to, wanted to handle and play with from the first moment I’d seen it.
I now had no doubt that the rest of the keys would fit the locks to my house.
The charm was another matter. I didn’t go for good luck pieces, I didn’t naturally gravitate to Irish emblems, though there were those in my family who made more of the Irish part of our heritage than I did. That was the only thing that was inconsistent at the moment.
I examined the charm again, and was struck by the same impressions that I had the first time I handled it. The enamel was dark green and beautifully made, the gold showed no scratches, no signs of wear at all, and the stone at the center of the leaves was probably a real, cut diamond. Brand new.
I turned it over and saw that there were initials on three of the leaves: “EJF.”
My initials.
Someone had the keys to my car. Had the keys to the house. Might not know the alarm codes, but had, at one point, most likely been inside the house.
Sometime later, my shovel scraped hard against a rock; the screech of metal on the rock jarred me. I looked around: I was in a shadowy, wooded area. The smell of pine needles, sap, and fresh dirt—a new note in the musty perfume of the woods—filled the still air. Just beyond the blade of the shovel I saw a hole in the ground, nearly filled; a small, scattered pile of dirt was beside it. I was sweating hard in spite of the shade and it felt like I’d been at work for a while. My hands were blistering—apparently I hadn’t been using good form—and there was dirt jammed deep under my nails. I looked down and saw my trowel stuck into the ground like a dagger. I wasn’t exactly certain where I was or how I’d gotten there. I recalled the visit to the coffee shop. I had driven here, I don’t know how. Muscle memory or instinct or dumb good luck got me there. I didn’t really remember anything. Hardly knew where I was.
A moment later and I recognized that I was beneath the trees at the far corner of our property. If I stretched, I could just make