Chapter Two – What the Mother Left Behind
The older woman did not immediately answer.
Instead, she crossed the room and removed a kettle from the stove even though the water had not begun to boil. The small gesture was unnecessary, and they both knew it. Yet it gave her something to do with her hands.
The younger woman remained near the center of the cabin.
She disliked the calmness of the room. She had expected neglect, perhaps even evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, the place was clean without appearing staged. A wool blanket rested over the back of a chair. Dried herbs hung near one window. A bowl containing two apples sat on the table.
Someone lived here carefully.
That realization complicated the anger she had been carrying.
“My mother kept the deed,” the younger woman said.
The older woman turned slightly.
“What deed?”
“You know exactly which one.”
“I know about several papers.”
The younger woman opened her leather bag.
From inside, she removed a folded document protected by cloth. She placed it on the table but did not push it toward the other woman.
“This was with her things.”
The older woman stared at it.
For the first time, composure left her face.
Only briefly.
Yet it was enough.
The younger woman saw it.
“You recognize it.”
“I recognize her handwriting.”
“That is not what I asked.”
The older woman inhaled slowly.
The sunlight had shifted farther across the floorboards now, catching one side of her face while leaving the other in shadow.
“She wrote to me once,” she said.
The younger woman froze.
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“How many?”
The answer came quietly.
“Eighteen.”
The room seemed to contract.
The younger woman had been a child then.
“You knew where we were?”
“Yes.”
“And you never came?”
“No.”
“Why?”
The older woman’s gaze moved toward the window.
“Because she asked me not to.”
The younger woman laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“My mother spent half her life refusing to speak your name, and now you want me to believe she was protecting you?”
“I did not say she was protecting me.”
“Then what were you to her?”
The older woman looked back.
“That is the question she should have answered.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No.”
“So I came here.”
The younger woman reached into the bag again and withdrew the letter she had found after the funeral.
She unfolded it carefully.
“My mother wrote that I should come to this house before judging her.”
The older woman’s expression became heavier.
“She should have written more.”
“She had years to do that.”
“Yes.”
“Did she hate you?”
The older woman looked down.
“No.”
The younger woman’s anger sharpened.
“That almost makes it worse.”
For a few seconds, neither woman spoke.
The cabin seemed filled with everything that had been delayed too long.
Then the younger woman noticed something near the older woman’s wrist.
A narrow silver chain.
Not jewelry one might normally notice.
But hanging from it was a tiny oval charm.
The younger woman had seen the same shape before.
Her mother had worn one identical to it for as long as she could remember.
The older woman quickly drew her sleeve over the chain.
Too late.
The younger woman stared.
“Where did you get that?”
The older woman closed her eyes.
And at that exact moment, footsteps sounded on the porch.
Slow.
Heavy.
Deliberate.
Neither woman turned.
Not yet.
