The claim that never closed

Spent the afternoon going through a box of old claim files I'd been avoiding. There's this one from about twenty years ago—a small house fire, total loss, but the paperwork was such a tangle of grief and suspicion that I never felt like I'd really settled it. Opening the folder again, the smell of the old paper came back like a cold hand on my shoulder. I don't know why I kept it all these years, but I'm glad I finally let it go to the shredder today.