She had put it there the day Walter left, tucking it in with the same hands that had cooked fifty years of meals in that kitchen, and she had not touched it since. Not when the furnace started making its grinding noise in February. Not when the gutters needed cleaning and she climbed up herself because she was not calling her son to come out on a Saturday for something she could handle. Not when the grocery prices climbed and she started buying the store brand of everything and telling herself she actually preferred it.
Not once, for five years, did she take that card out of the tin.
She knew what was in it. Walter had told her. “Two thousand dollars, Sylvie,” he had said, setting it beside her chipped blue teacup on the kitchen table with the careful placement of a man who had rehearsed this gesture. “For emergencies.
