Nobody wrote on a card. That was the first answer I got. They sat with the pens in front of them for a long moment and then Dashiell asked, very politely, whether the house was held in trust, and I understood that the year Ambrose asked for had not been a test at all. It had been a mercy. He had wanted me to find out while there was still time to build something else with what was left of my life.

The brass key in that envelope opened a desk drawer in the upstairs study, and the letter with it explained the condition. Ambrose had changed his will eleven months before he died, after Rosalind telephoned him asking whether I would be inheriting anything and how soon. He wrote that he had not told me because he did not want me to carry that knowledge into every Christmas.