Between Repairs

The key had felt heavier in Amara's palm than it ought to have. It was just metal—two brass teeth and a loop worn soft by fingers that had turned it over a thousand times—but it carried the weight of a lifetime arranged into a single small object. She stood on the sidewalk before the door as if the building might decide on its own whether to stay open to her. The street smelled faintly of coffee and wet paper, a city scent she had forgotten how to read. People in coats passed with a measured, inattentive pace, each footfall a reminder that the world continued whether she went inside that door or left it to the rent collector.

She had left the funeral in a quiet blur, the handshakes and the polite nods performing a ritual she could not feel. Her aunt's house had seemed smaller without the furniture of habits, a chair with a blanket draped over it like an afterimage, a mug still warm in the sink because someone had been trying to feel useful by rinsing things. The lawyer had said the right words about inheriting, about the logistics of property and accounts, and then he had slid a thin bundle of keys across the table. Amara had told herself she would decide later. Later arrived with the evening and the house's echoes following her to the shop.

She fitted the key into a lock that grumbled but yielded. The door smelled the way she remembered it—lemon oil, solder smoke, and the dry paper tang of labels gone soft. Light slanted in through a high window, catching dust motes like suspended punctuation. Workbenches lined the walls, each one marked by a faint crescent of cleaner wood where a hand had rested for decades. Jars of screws and springs sat in organized disarray, some lids tagged in her aunt's handwriting. A corkboard held notes, business cards, and a photograph pinned crooked: a younger Maeve smiling with an arm around a much younger Amara on a day when the haircuts matched in their defiant shortness.

Amara moved as if she were rediscovering a room she had always known. Her fingers brushed a rack of tiny files until they remembered the shape of a tool. She set the keys on the bench and began a soft, ritual inventory, the kind you do with a mixture of reverence and practicality. The tills were old, cedar shelves scratched along the edges, a calendar with pages bent back to years that didn't feel like that long ago. Someone had left a half-finished radio on the corner of the table, its faceplate flipped up, a coil dangling like a small breathing thing. Everything here had a story and a purpose. The thought hit her simultaneously like a comfort and a responsibility: it would not be simple to give this away.