Tucked inside was a little roll of cash wrapped in wax paper, two diamond earrings I hadn’t seen since I was twelve, and a folded letter with “For my younger girl” written across the front in my mother’s handwriting.
I sat on the edge of my bed with the purse lining hanging open and read the whole thing twice. Mom wrote that she knew exactly how things would go after she died. She said my sister always cared about things that could be counted and displayed, and that wasn’t necessarily evil, just the way she was built. Then she wrote, “You’re the one who notices when somebody changed curtains or sounds tired on the phone.” That line about knocked the air out of me.
The earrings were my grandmother’s. My sister had spent two days tearing through Mom’s jewelry boxes convinced they’d been stolen years ago. According to the letter, Mom hid them herself after overhearing my sister telling her daughter she’d probably get them eventually anyway. The cash wasn’t some huge secret fortune. A few thousand dollars from money Mom quietly saved from grocery budgets and birthday checks. She wrote that she wanted me to use it for “something restful,” which sounded exactly like her.
I didn’t tell anybody about the letter at first. Honestly, I didn’t want another fight over dead people’s belongings. But a few weeks later my sister called furious because she’d found out the earrings were missing and immediately started accusing movers, cousins, practically everybody except herself.
I let her talk for a minute before I finally said, “Mom already decided where they belonged.”
Then I hung up and carried the purse out to the garage because the seamstress down the road said she could repair the lining without ruining the leather. The whole drive over, the purse sat in the passenger seat smelling faintly like face powder and peppermint.