The kitchen table had come from Walter two years before he passed. He had brought it over on a dolly, said it was too fine to sit in an empty house and he wanted it somewhere it would get used. I had eaten a thousand meals at it since and never once thought it strange.
Now I got down on my knees and ran my hand along each leg. Three were solid oak. The fourth, back right, had a seam so fine I would never have found it if I had not been looking. I twisted, and the bottom of the leg turned in my hand like a lid.
Inside was a roll of cash, and folded around it, a small brass key with a paper tag. On the tag, in Walter shaky print, was the name of a bank two towns over and a box number.
I could not eat, could not sleep. First thing Monday I drove out there. A young teller led me to a back room, and I signed my name where Walter had put it years ago, and they brought me the box.
Inside was the deed to his house. The little blue house across the street where I had carried nine years of Sunday dinners. Paid off, free and clear, and signed over to me, along with a letter from an attorney making it all legal and plain.
There was a note in Walter own hand at the bottom. You set a plate for me every Sunday when my own girl would not answer the phone, so I am setting a place for you, one that will keep the rain off your head for the rest of your days.
I stood in that bank and shook.
I had moved into a house that felt too big after my divorce. Now I had two, and I did not want either one to sit empty the way his had. So I sold my old place. Walter house I fixed up, cleaned every window, planted the roses he always talked about wanting. His daughter, the one who never wrote, I tracked down and wrote to myself. I told her the house was mine now but that anything of her father she wanted, any photo, any keepsake, was hers for the asking.
She came. She cried on the porch. We are not close, but we are not strangers anymore either, and that would have made the old man happy.
Every Sunday I still cook a big dinner. I set an extra plate at Walter table, in Walter house, and I leave it there through the meal.
Some habits you do not break. Some friends you do not stop feeding, even after they are gone.