Door Key - Maya

It was a slim gold-colored key, filigreed at the top, about two inches long. It lay on the palm of her hand like a tiny sleeping animal. She closed her fingers around it, and it felt warm inside her hand, and comfortable - right - as though it were meant to nestle there. For a moment she thought she felt it move, just a slight wiggle, like a child snuggling down into her soft bed at night. She shook her head, casting off that idea. Her mother always said she had too vivid an imagination. A fantasy life that lifted her out of reality and out of what needed to be done. A dreaminess that would ultimately do her no good. So her mother said. In her heart of hearts she thought otherwise, but her mother had harangued her so often and so bitterly that she had almost begun to believe her.

And this key, this beautiful little key, had belonged to her mother. At least she assumed it did. She had found it in a little compartment in her mother’s puffy, blue, satin-covered jewelry box, an object she had found mysteriously fascinating as a child. She had spent endless hours sifting through it. So many daydreams were invested in that little box. Even though none of the jewelry was expensive (or “good” as her mother called it), the necklaces, pins and bracelets inside were a queen’s jewels to her. Or the treasures of a fairy princess. Or exotic belly dancer. Or perhaps a movie star. But somehow she had missed the key, never noticed it before.

Now her mother was gone, and the contents of the jewelry box – and the box itself – belonged to her. The end had come quickly and mercifully, for there had been pain, smelly hospital rooms, and unpleasant procedures done in haste. It had been a whirlwind of activity that ended suddenly, as though all of the gravity had been sucked out of the room, releasing everything into space. It felt like that. And here she was, the recipient of things once longed for and no longer wanted. Her mother’s legacy.

There was no message or note explaining which door the key opened. It was too big to be the jewelry box key, though she tried it anyway. Maybe it was just a key to nothing, something her mother liked the look of, the shape of, the color. She looked closer. It had a tiny rose engraved on it. Curious. It would not have been like her mother to collect a utilitarian object merely because she thought it beautiful. No, she was too practical, too efficient, too full of common sense. She was everything her daughter wasn’t. That key must open something.

She asked her father, but he had no idea, and no will to try to figure it out. These weeks later he still had not emerged from the shock of first grief. She’d get no help from that corner of the world. Any caretaking here would be hers, of him.

(To be continued.....)

Prompt: Door Key, 5/5/07