I got Aunt Inez wrong when I thought she was too tired to argue with Maxine. I watched my cousin make decisions for her, and I told myself it was easier on Inez if I stayed out of it. That was a clean excuse. It let me go home.

Inez lived in Millinocket, where the paper mill used to set the pace of a lot of people’s days. She was my mother’s older sister, and she had a small house with a porch that needed painting every other summer.

I visited when I could, though “when I could” often meant Christmas and a birthday call. Maxine lived close by and did the real work. I knew that. I just didn’t know how much.

Inez had kept a chipped glass candy dish beside her phone for as long as I can remember. The phone had a long cord, and the cord would get tangled around the dish if she talked too long. Every time I visited, she’d untwist it and ask if I wanted a peppermint. I usually said no. I always took one anyway.

Maxine had moved in after Inez started falling. At first it was just for a few nights. Then it was groceries, appointments, and making sure the stove was off. I’d call and hear Maxine in the background reminding Inez to take her pills. I thought Maxine sounded bossy. I didn’t ask if I could take a shift.

At the funeral, I sat in the second row and watched Maxine accept people’s condolences. She looked tired. I could have told her that. Instead, I kept thinking about how she’d already talked to the lawyer and how fast the house was going to be dealt with.

Afterward, while relatives were sorting the few things Inez had left out, Maxine pointed to the candy dish.

“Take that and quit whining,” she said.

I hadn’t asked for anything. I had only said I wanted something small to remember Inez by. Maxine laughed and said Inez knew what I was worth. I felt my face get hot, but I didn’t answer. I wrapped the dish in a Dollar General bag and carried it to my car.

Maxine got the house, the Buick, and $96,000 in savings. I got a dish with a chip on the rim. I knew how that sounded, even while I was thinking it.

Maxine had been there. I had not. Still, I kept counting what she got.

The dish cut my thumb on the way home. I was at my kitchen sink, rinsing the blood off, when the felt bottom started to peel away. I almost put the whole thing in the cupboard. Then I saw a little strip of tape underneath.

The tape held a flat brass key and a safe-deposit receipt. The receipt showed a payment of $11, dated each January. The last one was eight months old. Inez’s name was printed on it, with a number for the bank box. On the line where the box’s contents should have been, she’d written my birth date.

I sat down at the kitchen table with a towel wrapped around my thumb. I don’t know why I remember the towel had a little red thread stuck to it. I remember that, but I can’t remember what I said when I called the bank.

The woman who answered told me they couldn’t open a box belonging to a dead person just because I had the key. She asked if I was the executor. I wasn’t. Maxine was.

Three weeks later, I called Maxine. I waited until after supper, which was silly, because I’d been rehearsing the call all day.

“I found a bank receipt in the dish,” I told her.

“What kind of receipt?”

“Safe-deposit box. There’s a key.”

She went quiet. I heard a television behind her, then it got turned down.

“Did you open it?”

“I can’t. They need the executor.”

Maxine let out a breath through her nose. She said she’d call the bank and set it up. She didn’t sound angry. That made me feel worse, for some reason. I had already pictured her telling me I was greedy.

The next morning, I told myself this might be a good thing. Maybe there was a letter from Inez. Maybe it was some old papers, or photographs. I even thought Maxine might come with me and we could talk like cousins again. I know. I was reaching.

Then Maxine called that afternoon and said the box was listed under Inez’s name but had been paid from Inez’s account. She asked why I thought the birth date was there.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just found it.”

“Maybe she left you something.”

It was the first kind thing she’d said to me since the funeral. I held onto it longer than I should have.

We set the bank visit for Friday, when Maxine could leave work early. The heat was bad that week. My car’s air conditioner only worked if I kept it on high, so the whole drive smelled like warm dust and old vinyl. I kept the key in my pocket and checked for it at every stoplight.

At the bank, a clerk took us to a small room and asked Maxine to sign a form. She had to show the executor papers. I sat with my hands under my thighs, trying not to rub the sore spot on my thumb.

The box came out with a hard scrape. Maxine put the key in. I watched her turn it, then waited while the clerk stepped away to give us room.

Inside were two envelopes, a bundle of savings bonds, and a folded sheet of paper. The bonds were held together with a rubber band that had gone soft and sticky. The writing on the top envelope was Inez’s. My name was there.

Maxine looked at it, then at me. “Go ahead.”

I opened the envelope. There was one page in it, folded twice. I read the first line and had to start over.

The bonds had been bought over years, some when I was a child and some after I’d grown up. Each one listed Inez as owner and me as the person to receive it after her death. The bank clerk explained that the bonds were mine to claim. The total value, with interest, came to $31,864.72.

Not a fortune. But it was mine.

The other envelope had a note for Maxine. Inez wrote that the house and savings were for her because she had kept Inez safe at home. She wrote that she knew Maxine had missed work and worn herself out. Then she wrote that the bonds were for me because she had started setting a little aside on my first birthday and never stopped.

I read it twice. The words stayed plain. Inez had not left me the dish instead of something valuable. She had kept the bonds in the box because she wanted me to have them, and she had kept the dish because it was where she hid the key.

Maxine sat down hard in the chair. She pressed her thumb against the edge of Inez’s note.

“She knew I was doing all of it,” she said.

I wanted to say that I knew too. But I hadn’t. I had watched from far away and let the parts I didn’t like become Maxine’s whole character. She was sharp with Inez sometimes. She was sharp with me at the funeral. Both things were true. So was the fact that she had spent years there while I called on Sundays.

Maxine looked at the bonds in my hands.

“I thought she’d left you the dish,” she said.

“She did,” I said. “Just not only the dish.”

We didn’t hug. I didn’t expect one. The clerk came back to ask if we needed copies, and Maxine said yes. I kept my mouth shut while she handled the paperwork. I had let her do that for years, then blamed her for being the one who knew how.

Two weeks later, the bank mailed the bond papers to my house. I deposited the money into my savings account. I didn’t buy anything with it. For a while, I couldn’t even look at the account balance without seeing Inez’s careful handwriting on that envelope.

Maxine and I spoke again after the estate closed. She kept the house, and she sold the Buick. The $96,000 went toward bills, taxes, and the costs of Inez’s care. Maxine told me the final amount left to her was less than people thought. I didn’t ask for proof. I was done counting her money.

I still had to say something. I’d been avoiding it since before Inez died, and I couldn’t keep using the dish as a reason to wait.

I called Maxine on a Sunday. She answered after the third ring. I said I was sorry I hadn’t come more, and that I’d left her to carry too much by herself. I said it badly. I said it twice. She didn’t tell me it was all right.

After a minute, she said, “I know you loved her.”

I looked at the candy dish on my table, with the brass key still taped under its felt bottom. “I should have been there more,” I said.