Leonard always felt most alive in the air.

Suspended between earth and sky, a man could think. The engines drowned out small talk. Seats and trays set the rules. No one could get to him.

Today there was only tomato juice in a plastic cup.

The seatbelt sign had been lit since takeoff. The woman beside him clutched her cross until the chain pressed a red line into her neck. A baby whimpered behind him and then hiccuped itself quiet.

Condensation slid down his cup. Each droplet fell at its own pace, but ended in the same place. People did that too.

Claire, with her soft blonde hair, her expensive perfumes, and her rotting heart. She’d be “at yoga” now, which meant Alex - the personal trainer with perfect teeth and hands that had never known a tool. A man who sweated more over filters than steel.

The fuselage groaned and flexed. Outside the small oval window, a flicker of white split the clouds - a thin, jagged line that vanished before he could blink. Leonard set both palms flat on his knees and held them there.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, calm but clipped: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re about to encounter some rough air. For your safety, please take your seat immediately and fasten your seatbelt. We’ll keep the seatbelt sign on until conditions improve.”

Leonard closed his eyes. There was nothing left for Claire to take. Not anymore.

Two weeks earlier.

The garage smelled of oil and damp concrete. The chest freezer hummed. A moth battered itself against the bare bulb, left a powder mark, tried again.

Leonard crouched beside Timmy, nine years old.

“If Daddy dies from a heart attack or dies on a plane,” Leonard said, “you’re the man of the house.”

Timmy looked up - brown eyes, serious, waiting for clear rules.

“These twelve words are a map,” Leonard said. He showed two folded slips. “Not for Mommy. For you. Never give them to her. Not even if she cries.”

“What if she says please?” Timmy asked.

“She will. Don’t,” Leonard said.

Timmy nodded. He wasn’t quick, but he kept what he was given.

“Say it back,” Leonard said.

“Don’t tell Mommy. Even if she cries. Book first, then the slate. Words in order.”

“Good,” Leonard said, touching the boy’s shoulder.

Timmy sat cross-legged in front of the TV his mother always put on when she was doing yoga upstairs. He looked up from his Nintendo Switch.

A red ticker slid along the bottom of the screen: Flight to Amsterdam makes emergency landing after turbulence injures 25 passengers.

Claire came downstairs with damp hair, robe loose. Alex followed with his mat under one arm, smiling like he had improved the household.

“Was Daddy on that one?” Timmy asked.

Claire stared at the ticker. “What makes you say that?”

“He said if his plane crashes, we get the treasure.”

Her phone slid from her palm to the carpet. “What treasure?”

“The magic words,” Timmy said. “For the magical internet money.”

Alex smirked and then erased the smirk when he saw her face.

“Show me,” she said.

In Timmy’s room, Claire yanked books from the shelf she had never dusted until she found the one that looked wrong between the colorful Dahl children’s books — The Key to Rebecca. Pages stuck from old humidity. It opened to the color photo section, a belly dancer. Claire flicked past it. A folded slip fell out.

Six words in Leonard’s cramped hand:

abandon – silver – battle – frost – hollow – cake

Claire’s heart thudded.

“Is this all of it?” she asked.

Timmy hesitated. In his head, breaking the promise might somehow help his father.

“Half,” he said.

“Where’s the rest?”

“In the roses.”

Claire made the face she used for prices she did not accept. She slipped the slip into her palm and headed for the back door.

The rain had eased to a silver drift. The flower bed held water and the clean smell of ripped green. Claire stepped into it barefoot. Her silk blouse clung to her ribs. The bed was her pride - “my little Eden,” she had called it for strangers on Insta. Now the garden looked back at her without sympathy.

She grabbed stems and tore them up. Roots came with them. Mud streaked her thighs. Thorns drew lines on her arms. She ignored them. Alex stood under a wide black umbrella, checking his phone between glances at her ruined work.

“There,” Timmy said. “Under the slate.”

Claire pushed her fingers into the soil, found the edge, and levered the flat stone up. It came free with a wet heave. Below sat a short PVC tube capped at both ends, glue rings dull and even. She pulled it out. Earth ran off the white plastic in slicks.

“Hold this,” she said.

Alex took the slate like a butler takes a tray, keeping the umbrella over himself.

The cap wouldn’t turn. “Tools,” she said.

Timmy ran to the garage and returned with the rubber strap wrench. She cinched it, pulled. The glue cracked. The cap turned.

Inside: a vacuum-sealed Mylar sleeve with a silica gel packet clear as glass. The inner packet gave when she tore it. The slip slid out, dry and stiff.

Another six words:

orchard – cabbage – daughter – eager – kangaroo – …and then a word beginning with TRU - maybe trust or truth.

Claire stared at the smear until the shapes stopped meaning anything.

“Inside,” she said.

The kitchen smelled of soil and metal. Mud and leaf prints marked the tile.

Alex set his mat on the counter and downloaded AQUA. “It’s the one he always talks about,” he said. The blue icon glowed.

Claire typed. She guessed the last word: trust. The screen blinked:

Please check your recovery phrase and try again.

She tried truss. Same result. Thrust. Same. She tried rust. Must. She tried the kind of guess that came from anger. The message did not change.

“Maybe it’s case sensitive,” Alex said.

“It’s not,” she said.

She tried trust again. The wallet opened.

Balance: 0.00000010 BTC

She stared. “What the hell is this?”

Alex leaned with care so he wouldn’t touch the dirt on her sleeve. “Is that… a lot?”

Something left her face. She threw the phone. It hit the tile and spun.

Timmy stood in the doorway, small and stiff. “Daddy said never trust you,” he said.

Her mouth opened, but the words didn’t come. She looked down at her arms - thin red lines, dirt under every nail. She saw her reflection in the oven door: hair down, face wet, blouse clinging, eyes blank.

She turned on the tap. The mud let go in strings. The cuts stung. The sink looked like a field after rain.

She shut off the water and stood, palms flat on the counter. The hum in the room was the refrigerator and the drip from the torn Mylar.

She opened the bin under the sink and dropped the smeared slip in. Onions, lemon cleaner, old plastic came up. She closed the bin with her hip.

She walked to the glass door and stared out at the hole where her bed had been. The slate lay on its side. The ceramic rabbit was face down, one ear in mud.

She looked at the TV. The anchor was talking about the Consumer Prices Index.

She opened the app again: 0.00000010 BTC. She pushed a button and it said: 10 sats.

“And now what?”

“Can we call someone?” Alex asked.

“Who?” Claire said.

“A bank,” he said.

She laughed once. It sounded like a cough pulled wrong.

He adjusted the umbrella as if he were still under it. “I should go,” he said.

“Go,” she said.

He went.

Timmy crossed to the bin, opened it, and took the smeared slip back out when she turned away. He smoothed it. It stayed wrong. He folded it, slid it into The Key to Rebecca, and also slid in a scrap on which he had written TRUST in block letters. He put the book back and looked at it for a long time, like a door that would open for the right hands.

Upstairs, the shower ran. She did not go.

The plane hit a patch that lifted Leonard’s stomach and set it back. Gasps rose and fell. The woman’s cross chain left a deeper mark. A man in a suit asked no one, “Is this normal?”

Leonard kept his eyes closed. He pictured Claire barefoot in the mud, silk clinging like a bandage, roses ruined, phone on tile, 10 sats on the screen. He let the picture of her tear at the soil and rip up her Eden until she was nothing but scratches, wet fabric, and that empty number.

He knew where the real thing lived. Cold steel. Three-of-five. Two signatures that did not care about perfume or tears. A time lock that would ignore pleading and wait for a birthday.

He thought of the garage. The moth beating the bulb. The boy’s slow nod. The sentence he had given his son to say back: Don’t tell Mommy. Book first, then the slate. Words in order. He had kept the rest in his head, where moisture couldn’t bleed it.

He lifted the cup and finished the tomato juice. It had the taste of a can that remembered tomatoes.

The landing gear lowered with a click he liked. Honest steel meeting air.

The runway rose up and accepted the plane. Wheels found it and held.

Leonard opened his eyes. A seam of sunlight cut the cloud. The edge of the sea showed blue and patient.

He let the picture of Claire rot in his mind until there was nothing left but mud and the word TRUST.