PART 2 – I Brought My Mother’s Letter to Someone I Trusted, Hoping for an Explanation, but the Questions Began Before I Could Explain Why

I spent more time preparing for the meeting than I needed to.

I checked the letter again.

I made sure the pages were together.

I looked inside the tin, although I already knew what I had placed there.

It wasn't that I thought something had changed.

I was nervous.

There was something uncomfortable about carrying a question from one person to another when the first person could no longer answer for herself.

My mother had left me something.

I was taking it to someone else.

And I had no idea what that person might see in it.

I kept telling myself that I was doing the sensible thing.

If Carol knew something, she could tell me.

If she didn't, I would have lost nothing by asking.

That was how I justified the decision.

It sounded convincing until I started thinking about what would happen if she did know something.

What if she recognized the letter?

What if she knew why my mother had kept it?

What if she understood the meaning of something that had never made sense to me?

I wasn't sure I was ready for those answers.

But I went anyway.

I had spent enough time sitting alone with questions that were getting me nowhere.

I needed another person to look at what I had found.

I needed to know whether the letter meant what I thought it meant or whether grief had made me read too much into it.

By the time I arrived, I had rehearsed what I wanted to say.

I would begin with the simplest facts.

My mother had died.

I had found something she left behind.

I wanted Carol to read it.

I would let her decide what to say after that.

I didn't want to tell the story in a way that pushed her toward a particular answer.

I wanted her honest reaction.

At least, that was what I told myself.

The truth was that I wanted her to reassure me.

I wanted her to look at the letter and say that there was nothing to worry about.

I wanted the questions to disappear.

I wanted my mother's death to remain what I had thought it was: a loss, not the beginning of a mystery.

I had no reason to believe that would happen.

Still, I hoped.

I brought the tin with me.

It was an ordinary thing to carry, and yet I kept thinking about it as I made my way to the meeting.

I had no idea whether it contained anything beyond the letter that mattered.

I didn't know what my mother had expected me to do after reading it.

I didn't know whether she had told Carol anything before she died.

And I didn't know what Carol would think when she saw what I had brought.

I had known Carol long enough to trust her with a difficult conversation.

That didn't mean I knew everything about her.

It didn't mean she knew everything about my mother.

But I believed she might be able to help me understand what I had found.

That belief was enough to get me through the door.

We settled in.

For a moment, the meeting felt ordinary.

I had the tin with me.

The letter was there.

I could finally stop imagining how the conversation might go and begin having it.

Then Carol looked at the container.

She didn't immediately ask what it was.

She didn't reach for it.

She looked at me, then at the tin, as though the two things belonged together in a way I hadn't considered.

I noticed the change.

It was small, but I noticed it.

There was a difference between looking at something unfamiliar and recognizing something you had hoped never to see again.

I couldn't say which one I was watching.

I only knew that Carol seemed to have a question ready before I had explained why I had come.

That unsettled me.

I had expected to begin the conversation.

Instead, I found myself waiting for her to speak.

I wondered whether I had made a mistake by bringing the tin.

I wondered whether my mother had told Carol something that I had never been told.

I wondered whether this meeting was going to be more difficult than I had prepared for.

I could have put the container away.

I could have told Carol that I had changed my mind and that we could talk another time.

But that would have meant carrying the same questions home with me.

I was tired of doing that.

So I stayed where I was.

I waited.

Carol finally spoke.

Her question was about my mother.

Not about the letter.

Not about what I had discovered.

Not even about why I had come to see her.

She wanted to know whether my mother had been the one who told me to bring the tin.

I wasn't prepared for that.

I had assumed Carol would need me to explain the circumstances.

Instead, she seemed to be asking about an instruction that might have come from my mother.

For a second, I didn't know how to respond.

I thought about the letter.

I thought about what I had been told and what I had not been told.

I tried to remember whether there had been anything I could honestly describe as a direct instruction.

There hadn't.

My mother had left me a note.

That was the answer I could give without pretending to know more than I did.

I told Carol about it.

I watched her while I spoke.

I expected her to relax once she understood that I hadn't come because of some elaborate plan.

She didn't.

Instead, her attention remained fixed on the tin.

That was when I began to understand that I might have brought her something she recognized.

I didn't know what it was.

I didn't know why it mattered.

But I could no longer pretend that this was an ordinary visit.

Carol had not asked about the tin because she was curious.

She had asked because its presence meant something to her.

I had come looking for answers.

Now I was afraid of what those answers might be.

Click here to continue reading: PART 3: Carol Looked at the Tin as Though It Belonged to an Old Conversation, Then Asked Questions I Had Never Thought to Ask