After eighteen years of silence, Miriam and Judith sat at opposite ends of the lawyer's table, and their mother's will was four words long.
Arthur Penniman adjusted his bifocals and tilted the single sheet of cream stationery toward the window. At seventy-four, Arthur had drawn up deeds for half of Chillicothe, Ohio, and he did not look pleased to be officiating a riddle.
"Everything is in Box 412; ask your sister," Arthur read aloud, then looked up over his glasses. "That is the entire holographic instruction Clara left."
Miriam Halstead kept her spine straight against the walnut chair and did not look down the table. She was sixty-four, a retired piano teacher who still lived in the family house on Maple Avenue and wore a silver metronome pin on her collar.
At the far end of the polished oak sat Judith Miller. She was sixty-one, wearing a damp navy raincoat that still carried a faint smell of sugar glaze from the bakery she had owned twelve blocks away on Water Street before retiring last spring.
"That cannot be all of it, Arthur," Miriam said. "Mother was eighty-eight and saved appliance warranties from 1978."
"It is witnessed by two nurses at the hospice house and valid under Ohio law," Arthur said. He set two small manila coin envelopes on the blotter. "She did leave one condition with Ross County Savings, and the clock on it is short."
Miriam reached for the envelope bearing her name in Clara Halstead's steady hand.
"Today is Friday," Arthur said, glancing at the wall clock, which read one-fifteen. "The vault at Ross County Savings closes at 3:00 p.m. for the long weekend. Under your mother's dual-key safe-deposit lease, if both daughters do not open Box 412 before three o'clock today, the box is scheduled to be drilled and turned over to county probate court."
Judith spoke for the first time, her voice lower than Miriam remembered. "How long does probate take?"
"Six months, and four percent of the estate," Arthur said. "And neither of you can go alone. The bank requires both physical keys and both sisters signing the vault register on the same line."
Inside Miriam's coin envelope lay a flat brass guard key stamped 412 and a small white card. Across the center, in Clara's black ink, stood three digits: 0 - 9 - 1.
Down the table, Judith tipped her own envelope into her palm. Out slid the matching customer key and a white card reading 4 - 0 - 7.
Miriam stared at the two cards across the table. Put together, her numbers and Judith's formed 09-14-07.
September 14, 2007. That was the Friday their father's hardware store closed for good, and the day their bitter quarrel split the family in two.
Since that afternoon eighteen years ago, Miriam's pride had stayed stiff as starch. During the three weeks Clara spent in the hospice house, whenever Miriam drove over and saw Judith's blue Buick parked out front, Miriam sat in her silver Honda across the street and waited for Judith to leave.
On the Tuesday Clara died, the blue Buick stayed longer than usual. Miriam sat across the street with her hands on the steering wheel for twenty minutes too long, and by the time she walked inside, she had missed her mother's last waking hour.
Now Clara had left them eighty-five minutes to walk into a bank together.
When they were girls playing four-hand piano duets on Clara's upright Kimball piano on Maple Avenue, Miriam had always rushed the primo right-hand part to finish first. Clara had finally taken a pencil and written across the top of the sheet music: "Wait for the bass, Miriam. The left hand sets the measure."
Fifty years later, Miriam still intended to set the tempo herself.
At 2:05 p.m., Miriam pushed through the doors of Ross County Savings on Paint Street. Rain tapped against the tall windows, and the brass clock over the lobby showed fifty-five minutes until the vault gate came down.
Judith stood by the marble check desk, folding her umbrella.
Miriam stepped beside her, opened her purse, and took out her checkbook and pen.
"Mother's house on Maple Avenue is where I taught piano for thirty years," Miriam said quietly. "Name a fair figure for your half of whatever is in Box 412, Judith. I will write you a check right now, you can hand me your key and sign a release with Arthur, and you can leave."
Judith looked down at the checkbook, then up at Miriam's face.
"You think I stayed away for eighteen years waiting on a check?" Judith asked.
"I think you helped yourself once before when Dad's doors closed," Miriam said. "Let me buy you out so we don't have to pretend downstairs."
Judith's jaw tightened, though her voice stayed level. "Put your checkbook away, Miriam. You can't buy my signature off the bank register anyway."
Judith turned and walked down the marble stairs into the vault. After a three-second pause, Miriam capped her pen, dropped the checkbook into her purse, and followed her down.
Behind the wrought-iron vault grille sat Mrs. Gable, sixty-eight, who had minded the safe-deposit boxes at Ross County Savings for forty years.
"Afternoon, Miriam and Judith," Mrs. Gable said gently. "Miss Clara made me promise to hold strictly to the lease on Box 412, so I need both names on line nineteen, please."
Miriam signed the left side of the single line in the vault register. Judith stepped close enough for her damp sleeve to brush Miriam's arm and signed the right side.
Inside the steel vault, Mrs. Gable inserted Miriam's flat brass guard key and Judith's customer key into the dual locks of Box 412, turned both together, and pulled out a long tin safe-deposit drawer.
At 2:25 p.m., Mrs. Gable set the tin drawer on the table inside the small oak viewing booth and pulled the louvered door shut.
Miriam lifted the tin lid. Inside rested their father's locked cherrywood document chest, fitted with a six-wheel brass combination barrel across the front latch.
"Put your card down," Miriam said.
Judith laid her card reading 4 - 0 - 7 on the oak table. Miriam placed her own card, 0 - 9 - 1, to the left of it.
September 14, 2007. Of course their mother had used the date of the fight.
Miriam reached out and dialed her numbers first across the six brass wheels: 0-9-1-4-0-7. She pressed the brass thumb latch.
The latch refused to turn. Inside the barrel, a heavy spring clicked halfway and caught.
Judith leaned closer and pointed under the brass handle on the front of the cherrywood chest. Taped against the wood in Clara's neat script was a narrow strip of paper:
"Only two tries on the spring latch, girls. Ask your sister what date she kept in her purse."