A cedar chest, really. Small enough for one man to carry if he lifted with his legs. After Grandpa died, my parents emptied his house like they were processing a storage unit. Anything with resale value went first. The rest got divided into trash, donation piles, and whatever my mother called sentimental clutter. I had been the one to rescue the cedar chest from a damp corner of the garage before Jace used it to hold golf clubs. Inside were old photographs, Grandpa’s shipyard badge, his letters from my grandmother, the pocketknife he carried every day, a brass compass, a few notebooks, and a sealed envelope with my name on it I hadn’t yet opened because I couldn’t bear the finality.
That chest was the only thing in my parents’ house I truly cared about.
Maybe that was why I lasted three years there after winning.
Not because I was noble.
Not because I enjoyed testing them.
Because leaving something precious in the hands of careless people feels like a kind of moral negligence. And for a long time I was still stupid enough to believe I could outlast the house without letting it shape me permanently.