Model scene: The Spare Key (original, approx. 280 words)

Her father was already at the kitchen table when Maya came down, a mug of coffee going cold between his hands.

"You're up early," he said.

"Couldn't sleep." She opened the fridge and stared into it without taking anything out. "Did you eat?"

"I had toast."

The plate beside the sink was clean and dry. She closed the fridge.

"The moving truck comes at ten," she said. "I've packed most of the boxes. The ones in the hall are to give away."

"The blue chair isn't going."

"Dad, it won't fit in the new place. We measured."

"It isn't going." He turned the mug a quarter-turn on the table, then another. "Your mother reupholstered that chair the year you were born."

Maya sat down across from him. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked twice and stopped.

"Okay," she said. "I'll take it off the list."

He nodded, but he did not look up. After a while he reached into his shirt pocket and put something on the table between them: a small brass key on a loop of faded red thread.

"For the new place," he said. "So you can let yourself in."

She picked it up. The thread was soft from years of handling. It was the same thread that had hung from the back door of this house for as long as she could remember.

"You'll need to get a new one cut," she said, and her voice did something she had not planned.

"I know," he said. "I just wanted you to have that one."