POV: Mia
The key fits on the first try.
I am not even looking for a room. Rosa's key ring slipped when she was unlocking the linen closet and the spare key slid off and landed near the door at the end of the hall and when I picked it up I tried it without thinking, the way you try a door when a key is already in your hand.
One turn. One click.
I push it open and I stop.
I cannot move for a full minute. Maybe longer. I just stand in the doorway and look at what is inside and feel something happen in my chest that I do not have a name for yet.
My father's chess set. On a table by the window, exactly the way it always sat in his study the black queen slightly forward, the way he always left it mid-game when he had to stop playing. His books on the shelves behind it, organized by subject, not author, the exact system he used that drove every librarian and assistant he ever had completely mad. He always said organizing by author is for people who remember names. He remembered ideas.
