The top page was a deed. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. I pulled the page toward the light. The address listed wasn’t the farm. It was the lakefront lot over in Miller’s Creek.

The one my brothers had been fighting over for years. The one that was supposed to be the “crown jewel” of Daddy’s estate, but had somehow gone missing from the tax records three years ago.

The owner listed on the deed wasn’t Daddy. It was me.

I sat down hard. I didn’t even remember pulling the chair out. Everything started to click. The way Daddy had always made me keep the ledgers. The way he’d told me to make sure I kept my own safety deposit box at the bank on Fourth Street, even when I told him I didn’t have enough money to put anything in it.

He hadn’t been senile. He’d been terrified.

He knew what Lester and Dean would do the second he was gone. He knew they would tear the farm apart looking for everything.

I spent the next hour just sitting there, staring at the key. It was a key to a locker at the regional bus depot. A place no one ever goes anymore.

I didn’t call my brothers. I didn’t tell them a word. I just waited until it was dark, then I put the papers back in the accordion, wrapped it in a towel, and put it in the back of my closet.

The next morning, I drove to the depot. I found the locker. The lock was rusted, but the key turned with a satisfying, clean click. Inside was a black leather bag.

I didn’t open it until I got home. When I did, I found enough cash and secondary investment records to keep me comfortable for the rest of my life. Daddy hadn’t just left me the accordion. He had left me the life he never got to live because he was too busy raising two boys who only wanted what he could give them.

Three days later, Lester called. He was screaming about how the title search on the lakefront lot had come back with a name that shouldn’t be there. He was demanding I tell him what I knew.

I just let him talk. He sounded so small. He sounded like a child who had dropped his toy in a well.

I’m sorry, I said. I honestly didn’t know what you were talking about.

He didn’t believe me. He threatened to sue me, to take the house, to do everything he could think of. I just listened to the static on the line. I didn’t feel guilty. I felt, for the first time in my life, light.

I walked over to the closet and pulled out the accordion. I sat on the floor and pulled the bellows open. It made that wheezing, dying sound Daddy used to make.