[You are cordially invited]

	You are cordially invited to attend our gala event of the year.

At once aware of how many people would sell children to get an infitatio nto
an event like this and filled with dread at the thought, she folded the
cream colored paper neatly and pushed it into her satchel among the receipts
and notes that always seeme to sneak in, no matter how she tried to always
throw them away.

Click, the latch on the post box door makes a satisfyingly precise noise as
the door snaps shut. Checking the mai has always been one of her favorite
things to do as a child, her father made money on the side with chain letter
scams and selling information on how to start your own mail-order business,
and he would always send her to the post boxes, so if any irate victim of
his latest scam came around to see who checked the the mail, they'd find a
cute girl with overalls and pig-tails and a little pink back-pack.

She wasn't sure she cut her hair off at sixteen to spite him or not. She
knew her habit of always being aware if someone was eatching her check the
mail was his fault, though.

He finally got caught passing fake checks and he'd gone to jail for a couple
years. She'd gone to live with her mother and her aunt out on their farm
then. No post-boxes there, sad, and nobody felt too inclined to use her
childlike charms for misdeeds, which was a relief. The mail-box at the end
of the drive was a big aluminum box with the word 'Franks' on top, even if
her mother had changed her name back years before. It stood in a tall mass
of weeds, all prickly and hard to avoid even for growing twelve-year-old
girls. It was entirely undignified for mail, she'd always thought. All those
crisp envelopes laid out over the floor of a creaky, dented box in the
weeds.

The weeds had brought her one gift, though, she'd dropped an envelope as
she fetched the mail, and she saw the little iron key on a faded piece of
satin cord in the weeds.

She kept that key in the pocker of her overalls every day as she roamed
about the farm.

One day she'd been out dipping her feet into the drainage pond and decided
to stry the key in the lock of the little-used storage shed. It was a
perfect fit, and the lock made a satisfying click as she turned it. Not the
hollow post-box click, but a heavy, slow, purposeful one. The smell of old
furniture polish and dust hit her. She cautiously peeked inside, wondering
what would make anyone in her family lock a door on the farm, and what woudl
be so disused as to not start a hunt to find the misplaced key.

The room was filled with furniture. Not plain and practical, but elegant,
with carved legs and pretty curves. A whole dining set, and a box on top
marked "linens". Several parlor chairs, with a faint smell of smoke and
something she couldn't identify. There was a table with a mirror, so many
tiny drawers all lined with delicate pink-red velvet.

The jumble of legs and chairs and tables looked like it was carefully
placed, and the mirror glinted in the afternoon light filtering into the
shed through the tiny high windows.

The shed was srprisingly roomy, more spacious than she would have guessed
from the outside. The dust was thick, but the door fit tight an there wasn't
much wind down by the pond, so she couldn't hazard a guess at how long
things had been in here.

She pulled one of the chairs down off the stack and set it, velveteen seat
showing where it had pressed against the other chairs. She sat in front of
the mirror-table and pulled the drawers out to see what was inside. Bottles
of powder, and a silver case with a mirror inside in the shape of a
sea-shell. She felt awkward wearing denim overalls and sitting on a seat
that she felt like it remembered who sat on it.

She sequeezed the key in her hand, the square end sticking out. She decided
she'd have to come back and figure out why these things were here. She
gently closed the foor and turned the key again. she was once again in her
own word where overalls and flip-flops made sense.

She couldn't decide whether to ask her mother or aunt about the furniture or
whether to let it be.

The last time she'd asked her mother why something, her mother had looked
sad and told her to let it be -- "The past is passed, dear. Let it rest."
Same thing when she'd asked about why she'd left her father. One didn't ask
such things in her family.