Elias opened it in the car because his hands were shaking too much to wait. Inside was a letter in Mr. Whitlock’s careful handwriting and a key. The letter said that for five years my son was the only person who came, that his own children lived three states away and called on holidays, and that a boy who mowed a stranger’s lawn without being asked and without being paid had taught him something he thought he had stopped believing.
The key was to the detached garage behind the house, the one Mr. Whitlock never opened, and the letter said what was inside was Elias’s if he wanted it.
