You went to Italy with your wife in 1998 for a belated honeymoon. And in Florence – your favorite city – she helped you pick out a gorgeous leather briefcase to start your legal career. It cost a king’s ransom for two students, and you treasured it. It was with you for your first hearing, your first deposition, your first jury trial. It was beside you when, while cross-examining a trial witness named McWilliams, you referred to him variously as Mr. McKracken, Mr. McGregor, and Mr. Margaritas (three other witnesses in that trial). It was in your hand when a Federal Bankruptcy Court judge got so pissed off at you that she stormed off the bench and into chambers, only to realize she had not yet ruled on the other motion you had pending before her on that day’s docket, and was summoned back by the sheepish clerk so she could continue fuming at you. It was in the middle of the table during a thirty-six hour mediation when the tough guy mediator walked into the conference room and announced, in his thick New York accent, “nobody leaves until we get this thing done – hey, nice fucking briefcase!” It has battle scars and scratches from hard use, but its marks have only made it more attractive in your eyes. And though you carry it far less frequently, it’s still your bag of choice for everything from a contract negotiation with a client to a Vegas trip with the boys.

When you bought it, it came with a key for the locking mechanism that you never used. You kept it in a box on your dresser for a decade. Then, when you moved to Fort Worth, you hung the tiny key on a nail in the hall on a whim. And there it stayed for six more years. Until a month ago, when your five-year-old impossibly made the connection between that tiny, forgotten key hanging on the wall (supposedly beyond his reach) and the little hole in the front of your briefcase. And he somehow retrieved the key, and locked your briefcase. And then he couldn’t get it unlocked. And then he lost the key.

You don’t know what it’s like to see your prize horse shot, or to watch from the vantage of a parachute as your fighter jet goes down in flames. But the stages of grief a lawyer goes through – especially a foolishly sentimental one – when learning that his favorite briefcase may be permanently locked are dark and terrible to behold.

You spare the boy of course, because you must always spare the boy. But from a tense interrogation of your wife, you learn that the key was at some point in her possession as well. But she was unable to unlock the briefcase after several attempts, and she suspects the lock to be broken. She placed the key on the kitchen counter (the most highly trafficked room in the house), beside the toaster (the most commonly used item in the kitchen) – because that’s such an obviously safe place to store a tiny item of critical importance. And afterwards, the maids came and cleaned the kitchen . . . And now the key, like your sense of well-being, has disappeared.

Upon learning these facts, the myopic gusto with which you ransack your cluttered, 5,000 square foot house in search of the missing key – the impossibly tiny, Alice In Wonderland key – portends your undoing. For not since the days of William Barrett Travis has a cause been so righteous and so doomed.

In your search, you find everything anyone has ever lost *but* the key. So next you try to pick the lock – an unsavory aptitude you do not share with your younger brother. But a paper clip proves useless, as does a butter knife, a screwdriver, and the pointy plastic spear of a Lego dude.

Finally, you soberly consider whether to engage the services of a specialist, or to call the manufacturer, or to simply hang the case up next to your other trophies, a relic of a bygone era.

What were the contents again? A book on writing style that you were really enjoying; a couple of highlighters (used copiously on the book); and the as yet unread annual reports of Berkshire Hathaway, Lockheed Martin and Bank of New York Mellon. The list stings a bit, but contains nothing urgent or irreplaceable.

As with all unpleasant or vexing decisions, you let this one simmer on the back burner of your mind. After all, there are taxes to file, summer camps to line up, toenails to trim.

Weeks pass. And then today, your mother goes to the basement to fetch a bucket that the maids use. And there in the dry bottom of the bucket, rattling around like dominoes in the bed of an El Camino, is the key! What?! How?! Why?!

And she brings it to you, still in the bucket. And you grab it and hold it aloft in exultation. And you race to your briefcase, and gently, ever so gently, insert the key and turn. And the lock is not broken. (The very idea!) And it springs open with a familiar click-clack. And you cackle with triumph, and throw it open, and smell its leathery guts. And all is right and just and good in the world. And yet again, you learn that things work out, whether or not according to your plans. And for ten minutes or so, you’re as wise as Merlin.

And then you decide to hide the key in the decorative case in your library that holds the baseball signed by Nolan Ryan. Because who would find it there?