“What’s inside?” Olivia would ask.

Her mother was alive, but diminished, curled in a hospital bed installed in the living room. The trunk was still at the foot of her bed, the brass key still around her neck.

Then she started taking the stones out, one by one. She placed them in a line across the living room floor. A path.

She closed the lid. She did not put the key back around her mother’s neck.

Olivia held up the hammer. “Opening a window,” she said. “You can’t keep the air out forever.”