My grandma left $100,000 to my greedy cousin. I inherited only her old dog—until I discovered the secret it was hiding.

We made a plan to pay off my student loans, set aside enough money so I could one day buy a small house with a yard, and invest the rest the way Grandma had been doing, quietly and patiently.

I also carved out a portion for a scholarship fund in her name and another for local animal rescues, because it felt wrong to have that much and not open the circle wider.

On weekends, I drive out to her old neighborhood, park in front of the little blue house that now belongs to some young couple with flower boxes, and walk Bailey along our old route.

Sometimes the new owners are on the porch and we trade polite waves, but they don’t know that the dog sniffing their mailbox is basically the retired keeper of a family secret.Bailey grows slower every month.

His joints ache, his eyes get cloudy around the edges, and sometimes he forgets where he was going halfway down the hall.

But at night, when he curls against my bed and lets out a long sigh, I feel this strange steadiness, like Grandma is still here, supervising from somewhere I cannot see.Sometimes I hold his tag in my hand and run my thumb over the engraving, over the code that changed everything, and I think about how she hid the biggest thing she owned on the smallest, most ordinary object in her house.