A Tin of Keys (6 of 6)
The Deposit
My wife watched the key crumble to dust in my fingers.
“You were gone for about a minute,” she said.
Then she saw me weeping.
I tried to hold it back, but I couldn’t. Mark’s courage lingered—an ache in my ribs, a ghost in my bones. I could still feel the weight of his breath, the rattle in his chest, the way we fought to control his hand when he turned the key and gave me back my life.
She didn’t say anything else. Just took my arm and led me upstairs, moving slowly, like you might with someone who’s sleepwalking.
She put me to bed and lay down beside me, scratching my back with her fingernails the way she always had when I couldn’t sleep. I cried into the pillow, great quiet sobs that left me hollow and shaking. She never asked a question. Never demanded an explanation. She just stayed with me, anchoring me with her touch.
After an hour, I finally whispered, “It’s over.”
“Good,” she said, with a gentle finality. “Now go jump in the shower. Remember—Rachel’s coming over today.”
“She is?”
“Yeah, don’t you remember?”
“I guess not.”
“Seriously, Stephen? We just talked about this downstairs.”
“Huh?”
“About her bringing Mark’s things over.”
Tears came to my eyes again. I fought to hold them at bay.
“What things?”
“You know—his awards,”
“Awards?”
“Oh, you’re hopeless,” she said.
She got up from the bed, smacked my bottom playfully, and said, “Go get a shower, you smell like dust and oil somehow.”
My eyes were still red when I got out of the shower.
I didn’t feel the need to get dressed quickly, but after having lived for six months coughing up blood every hour, I felt remarkably healthy.
And I was thankful for it.
My wife had the table laid out with food and the house smelled nice.
“It’s not just Rachel, I take it?”
“Well, they are quite proud of their heritage. Can you blame them?”
I poked my head into the living room. “Heritage?”
“You look nice,” she said. “The tie is a nice touch, and you look good in that shirt.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She kissed me, and it was almost like the first time. I felt refreshed.
“What heritage?”
“Well, it’s not like they are poor.”
Except it was almost like that. They weren’t well-to-do folks.
“They should be here in just a couple of minutes. It’s been a long trip for them.”
“From Beals?” I asked, incredulous.
“From the Bahamas, silly.”
“They went to the Bahamas this week?”
“They live there,” she said. “What’s gotten into you?”
I was stunned. Since when did they live in the Bahamas?
“I guess they must maintain a summer home on Beals then?”
“Yes, I think they do.”
“So I guess I was lucky to catch her there when I phoned.”
She gave me a strange look. It unnerved me.
The doorbell rang.
Rachel had arrived.
She greeted me with a hug. “Wow, the place looks great!” she said. “Love the updates. Nice kitchen.”
Two men entered with her.
“This is my husband, Miles,” she said, “And my nephew, Kevin.”
I audibly gasped. My wife looked at me, annoyed.
“Kevin Whitney?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Glad to meet you.”
He was about the same age as his aunt. That made sense. Randall, his father, had been born a long time before Rachel. He was born in 1918 and she had been born in 1941.
I shook his hand, still stunned.
It had worked.
We had changed things.
But how? What had Mark done?
Thankfully, my wife stayed sharp. “Come, sit in the living room,” she offered.
They joined us, the three of them sitting on the sofa, while my wife and I sat on a loveseat perpendicular to them. Kevin sat in the middle with a box on his lap.
“So,” Rachel began. “It’s wonderful to be back in Nana’s place. Honestly, I was going to make you an offer for it, just to have it back in the family, but it seems like your ties are very strong here, so I won’t insult you.”
“Okay,” I said. I was unsure if I’d have appreciated an offer or not.
I looked at her, really for the first time, and could see a little bit of Anna in her. The same kind of twinkle in her eyes. I had been here in the house when she was born. But I was 35, and she was something like 60, and my brain was having a hard time connecting those two points.
Kevin opened a box that he had been holding on his lap.
Inside were ribbons, patches, two folded letters, and a photograph in black-and-white. And beneath it all, a crumpled uniform—one sleeve stiff with dried blood. A name tag missing. The serial number on the accompanying M16, catalogued on a folded Army receipt.
I instantly recognized them and caught my breath.
We had worn those things.
“I didn’t know until much later,” the man said. “I was just a scared twenty-four-year-old in 1968. All I knew was that someone up on the roof was keeping us alive. We called him The Coughing Man. He moved like a ghost. Never stayed long enough for a thank you. Just a whisper of boots, the smell of smoke, and a trail of blood.”
I couldn’t speak. My throat had gone dry.
“I only learned the truth because of him.” He pointed to a photograph of a British soldier—clean-shaven, younger, hands folded over a hospital bed. “Took him nearly twenty years to track down the right people. He said a man showed up at a convalescent hospital outside London. Had a rifle and a fever. Said he’d been fighting in Vietnam. Said he wanted to die someplace no one would find him.”
He pulled out a page—creased, stained with what looked like dried tears.
“He had letters. One to his mother. One to me. I didn’t even know he’d written it. The man who brought them—swore that the Coughing Man’s name was Mark Whitney.”
He handed me a citation from England. The George Cross, for conspicuous gallantry.
Tears fell from my eyes as I looked at it, wondering what Mark had gone through that day after he sent me away—to protect me from whatever horror he went through.
He handed me a second citation—The Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumous. I read them silently, my hands shaking.
“Thirteen lives,” Kevin continued. “He saved nine American soldiers. Including his nephew. Me. And four British soldiers.”
I couldn’t speak.
“My uncle was a very brave man. A very brave man.”
“Yes, he was,” I said through tears.
The doorbell rang.
“Ah,” Kevin said, “That will be my son.”
I choked, trying to hold back the memories. Mark, who never had children, had been brave enough to sacrifice that last of his life, to give Kevin a chance to live—and have his own children. I just wish Mark could have been there to see it.
And part of me wondered if he was.
My wife got the door as I sat looking at the medals.
A younger man, who looked like he could be Kevin’s twin, but twenty years younger, stepped into the living room carrying a longer case.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Mark, Kevin’s son.”
I lost it.
“Excuse me,” I said. I stepped into the bathroom, trying to remember what it had been like when it was a water closet in 1912. I thought of Anna and hoped that she had died with less sorrow.
My wife knocked. “You okay?”
“Yep,” I said, clearing my throat.
I came back to the living room, where they were chatting, idly.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No worries,” Mark (the younger) said.
He opened the case and produced the Springfield, Model 1844, bearing the marks of a century of use. It was the same rifle I first saw in 1912, but now bore the marks of Vietnam when I (we) carried it.
“May I?” I asked.
“Certainly,” the man said.
I picked it up, gently and looked it over. I ran my finger along the stock, remembering the time we had dropped it together because each thought the other was holding it.
I smiled faintly at the memory.
“Thank you for bringing these to show me,” I said. “Thank you.”
“We’re going to go see Mom,” Rachel said. “If you’d like to come.”
“Her grave is near here?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“Momma’s still alive,” Rachel said. “She’s stubborn. She’s at the nursing home.”
“That’s—” I stood. “She’d be over one hundred!”
“Momma is one hundred and two,” Rachel said.
I looked over at my wife. She nodded and said, “I’ll come with you.”
We waited in the waiting room as they visited.
Eventually, they came out and Rachel said, “Momma is weak. It won’t be long. She just lies there clutching that key she always carries around.”
“Key?” I asked.
“It’s a lucky charm,” Rachel said. “Go on in and say hello. I’m sure she’ll want to hear about the house.”
To me, she looked like she weighed less than a memory. Her hair had turned the soft color of ash decades ago, and was now thinner than gauze, swept back from her temples and held in place by the quiet dignity of advanced age. Her skin looked paper-thin, creased, translucent, beautiful in its own way, like the surface a well-loved book.
“Hello,” I said.
She turned to look at us, my wife and I.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said. “You must be the kids that live in the house in Marshfield.”
“We are,” I said.
“How is the old place?”
We went on to tell her all about the renovations and the kids that played there. We told her about some things we found in the barn, and in the walls of the house.
She smiled and gazed into the distance as we spoke with her.
“That’s nice,” she said pleasantly. “It’s good to hear about the old place. I always thought of it as haunted.”
“Really?” I asked.
She turned to look at me and then did a double-take. Really looking at me. Her eyes narrowed.
“I know your eyes,” she said.
“You do?”
“I do,” she said, smiling. “I have something for you.”
I just stared at her.
She fumbled a bit and then reached beneath her dressing gown and produced an old brass key.
She looked at it fondly, holding it in her frail hands.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked, conspiring with us.
“What’s that,” my wife asked.
“I have been on many adventures with this key,” she said. “I think you know what I mean.”
The last was directed at me.
“But it’s time to turn it over. My adventures are done.”
She handed me the key.
“I always knew you were real,” she said. “But if you are up for another adventure, find what it goes to.”
Twenty-five years have passed since she gave me the key, and I have done everything to make it do something. But I never traveled again. There was no magic in the key, and as time has slipped away over the years, I continue to question whether any of it was real.
I turned my attention to other things, returning to the normal life that my wife had wanted, and we were happy.
We were sitting on the swing on our front porch when our friend Paul, a banker from town, stopped by with papers to sign on the refinance of a mortgage on our summer camp at Gardner’s Lake.
“Howdy,” he said as he climbed the steps up to join us. He sat in an Adirondack chair and looked over the lawn.
“Can I get you some lemonade, Paul?” my wife asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Thank you. Sure is a warm for September.”
“Yeah, I agreed.
I pulled off my shirt. I didn’t need the extra layer. Underneath I was wearing what they used to call a muscle shirt, just an armless tee shirt.
Paul glanced over at me and then raised his eyebrows.
“What?”
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“Around your neck.”
I looked down. “Oh, it’s an old key I found a long time ago. No idea what it goes to.”
“I do,” he said.
“You do?”
“Yeah, that goes to one of our old safe deposit boxes. We’ve got a section in there that goes back to the 1930s. I’m sure it’s one of those.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe you’ve got a treasure down there.”
“Huh?” I said. “I never thought.”
My wife returned with lemonade.
“What are you guys chatting about?”
“Paul says this key goes to a deposit box at the bank.”
“Well, it was given to him by the woman who owned it,” my wife said. “Around 2002.”
“What was her name?”
“Anna Whitney,” I said. “She gave it to me and told me to find where it went and that it would be an adventure for me.”
“Shit,” he said. “Now I”m intrigued. Wanna go check? We got forty minutes before the doors lock.”
My wife and I went together, following Paul into the bank.
He showed us into his office and said, “I’ll be right back.”
Moments later, he returned with an old dusty ledger.
“Let me see the key. Should have a serial number on it.”
“13577,” I said.
“Figures you’d memorize it,” he said.
He flipped through the pages.
“Here we go,” he said. “Yep. Box 318. In the old stacks. Be right back.”
He returned in ten minutes with a lock box.
“I’m curious to know what’s in it,” Paul said, “But I’ll give you some privacy.”
He closed the door and left.
I looked at my wife, the key in my trembling fingers.
“Oh, give it to me, if you’re worried,” she said.
She snagged the key from me and opened the box.
There was a single folded piece of paper from an old stenographer’s book. Aged and yellowed.
We stared at it.
“Go on,” she said.
I picked up the paper and a business card slipped out.
My wife picked it up. “Who is Kidder, Peabody & Co?”
“No idea,” I said.
It was a handwritten letter:
Hello.
I always knew you were real.
When Rachel was born, you were with me.
You told me you should have invested in Philip Morris.
So I did.
Not much, so don’t expect a lot.
But I squirreled away $211 from 1941 and 1942 combined, bought certificates, and assigned management to Kidder-Peabody. You’ll find their card inside. The account is anonymous.
Thank you for helping my family.
Anna.
“What does Devonshire 4-2112 mean?” my wife asked.
“I think that’s an old-time phone number. Hopelessly outdated now.”
“What’s the letter say?”
“She left us some money in a brokerage account.”
“Really?”
“Yep, two hundred eleven dollars. But from a long time ago. The letter is dated Christmas 1942.”
“Could be worth thousands by now,” she said.
“So, what do we do? Do we call this bank and tell them Anna Whitney told us we could have her funds?” I asked.
“No idea,” my wife said.
She flipped the card over.
“There’s a handwritten account number on here,” she said.
A whole convoluted series of events had happened since 1941, but Kidder, Peabody & Co. no longer existed. Their assets were transferred to PaineWebber in the 1990s, and then the Swiss banking giant UBS Financial Services acquired PaineWebber in 2000. For the last twenty-five years, UBS had managed the account.
The telephone call was quite fruitless. They were very kind but said that kind of legacy account needed to be presented in person.
“Can’t you just send me a check for whatever the balance is?”
“You need to make a claim in person, I’m afraid,” the gentleman on the other side said.
“What do I need to bring?”
“Let me check.”
I was on hold for nearly twenty minutes before he got back to me. He was breathless when he did.
“Sorry for the long hold, sir,” he said. “Do you, by any chance, have an original Kidder, Peabody & Co. business card?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Does it happen to have a handwritten account number on the back?” he seemed excited.
“Yeah, it does.”
“Oh, my God,” he said.
“What?”
“You need to come here. As soon as you can.”
“To Boston?”
“Yes. You’re holding the key to a legend. Protect it.”
“A legend?”
“It’s an account that’s 83 years old,” he said. “The last of its kind.”
Two days later we were at One Post Office Square, 35th Floor, in Boston at UBS.
When we arrived, a valet opened our doors for us.
“Good morning, Mr. Anthony,” he said.
My wife and I exchanged looks.
We were greeted by a group of seven, four women and three men, one of whom was clearly the boss.
“Mr. Anthony,” he said. “I’m Vic Toomey. Let’s go to a conference room.”
“I’m Steve,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Well,” he said, “You have a very old account, and in the last two days, we’ve been working through it to make sure we’ve got it right. It’s taken a bit of time on our part.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Have a seat. Coffee, water, juice?”
“I’m good,” I said.
He sat and straightened his tie, and opened a folder in front of him.
“So, let me first say that we at UBS would be very pleased to remain your broker, and hope you will consider keeping your investments here.”
“I think we’ll probably just take a check,” I said.
He seemed flustered, but it went away after a moment.
“Do you have the card?”
I handed it over.
Twenty people outside the conference room’s glass windows seemed to lean in to peer at the artifact.
They took the card away.
“What’s going to happen next?” I asked.
“They are going to certify the card.”
“What does that mean?”
“Paper and ink analyses. Handwriting expert. A few things like that.”
“How long will it take?”
“I would imagine a few hours. But you said you’d like to make a withdrawal by cashier’s check? How much?”
“All of it,” I said.
He stared at me, stunned and an awkward silence followed.
Finally, he said, “All—Well, that won’t be possible. I—we’re limited as to the size of a bank check we can issue.”
“What’s the cap? Can we get an exception?”
“It’s a fixed cap on a check, but we could do some electronic funds transfer,” Vic said, “although I really hope to convince you otherwise.”
“Well,” I asked, “how much are we talking?”
“One hundred-forty-six,” he said.
My wife gasped.
“One hundred-forty-six thousand,” she whispered to me.
It would be enough to pay off our camp mortgage.
But he heard her.
“I didn’t say ‘thousand’,” Vic said, gently.
We stared at him.
He looked down at the paper in front of him. “As of market close last night, the value was one hundred forty-six million, five hundred eleven thousand, four hundred twelve dollars…and some change, but who’s counting? We’re counting, that’s who!”
We were too stunned to laugh at his pun.
“What?” I asked, dumbfounded.
My wife grabbed my hand under the table. She was shaking.
He nodded. Then he grinned—because he saw the moment it landed for us.
“You’re going to need a money manager,” he said. “And I would very much like to be that guy.”
I thought it would be my wife who hyperventilated.
It wasn’t.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
I did not expect the angle you took this story!! I loved every word of it