I looked around, feeling suddenly sorry to be out here, in the fresh, dewy night.

“We can just leave it,” he said. “It’s okay.”

That suggestion, so mild and harmless, sent a wave of anxiety through me. “No,” I said. “We have to lock the gate.”

I began searching the ground around us—perhaps it had simply slipped out and was lying at our feet. But a quick visual sweep showed nothing, and even when Barrett took out his phone and turned on the flashlight, we couldn’t find the key.

I wandered a few steps away, drawn toward the pile of empty pots and spindly tomato cages sitting nearby.

“It couldn’t be that far,” Barrett said, but I knelt anyway and looked in the dirt. He came over behind me and held up his phone, moving it around.

“There,” I said, seeing the flash of metal barely sticking out of the soil. I reached over and grabbed it, but instead of the metal key, my fingers were clasped around a small buckle. I tugged it, and it reluctantly came out of the dirt. The metal part was attached to a thin strip of cracked, filthy leather.

“What’s that?” Barrett asked, leaning closer. His arm brushed my arm and I forgot what I was doing for a moment. “A collar?”

“Did you guys use to have a cat?” I asked. The band was so short it would barely have made it around my wrist. “Or a really small dog?”

“No, never,” he said. “Mom hates cats. And she thinks dogs are dirty.”

“It was probably a cat,” I said. I knocked loose a clump of mud, revealing a filthy bell. “Definitely a cat.” Then I rubbed away the caked dirt from the little tag, revealing a name: MISSY.

“It must be really old,” he said.

I sighed. What I really wanted was to find the key so we could lock the graveyard and go inside.

Barrett shone the phone around in one last defeated movement.

“There—” I crossed the path and walked down to the closest flowering plant, clusters of tiny purple and white flowers on thin, weedy stalks. Lying in front of it, as neatly as if it had been placed there, was the key.

“How did it get there?” Barrett asked.

I looked around. “Must have been the wind,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

I was relieved just to have found it, so I tried not to dwell on the weirdness as I locked the gate and held the key in my hand.

We walked slowly back to the house, our hands linked together.

As we came around the corner, the back door of the house opened.

I dropped Barrett’s hand like it was a buttered eel.

Laura stepped outside. Next to me, Barrett stood straighter and took a deep, nervous breath.

“Well, hello,” she said pleasantly as we came closer. “What are you two up to?”