Today’s prompt:  Write about someone discovering a key.

It was buried down deep in the bottom of his pants pocket.  The pair he never wore and she was always begging him to get rid of.  Someone else could wear those, you know.  But he never did.  Pulling them out of the drawer, the odd lump drew her attention, pulling her thoughts from the abyss.

She reached into the pocket and felt the shape of something cold and metallic in her fingers.  Slowly drawing it out, she looked at the small key in the palm of her hand.  She had never seen it before and had no idea what it was a key to.  There were so many boxes full of things in the basement it might unlock, or maybe it was something else, something left at his office, or lost during one of the many moves they made.  How long has it been there?  She couldn’t begin to guess.  The pants had been folded, unworn, in that drawer for as long as they had lived in this house.

Turning the key over in her hand, she thought back to the last time she remembered seeing him wearing these pants.  So many years ago when they were both younger, and thinner,  with no idea of where life would lead them.   No plans written in stone for life, letting it take them where it would.  And it was a great journey.  But none of those memories helped with the mystery of the key. And no key would help unlock the door that had shut his mind to the world, no memory of pants once worn would bring him back.

Sighing, she walked to the bathroom, turned the key over once more in her hand, and tossed it in the trash, and went back to her work.