She pulled out a thin, creased envelope, the name written in Mom’s looping hand: Claire Martin. My breath stopped. Claire. I had not known Claire existed. The envelope threatened to rescript our family into something bigger and angrier than I could carry in the church vestibule.
She held it like a relic. ‘She found Mom last week,’ my sister said, voice small for once. ‘Claire. She was at the hospice. Mom asked me—if anything happened—if I could get this to her.’ My coat pocket felt impossibly warm; the locket against my ribs a traitor’s weight.
‘You stole it,’ I said. It wasn’t a question.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I took it. She said it belonged to Claire.’ Her eyes were wet and raw in a way simple theft never makes anyone. ‘Mom told me things—where she’d been, the name she used, a town. She begged me to find her if—’ She couldn’t finish. Neither could I.
People filed out. My husband waved from the car, patient, clueless. I thought of the years I had arranged, rationed, forgiven. I thought of the spare room I kept for visitors who never came. For an instant I wanted to shove the envelope back into her hands and close off this new wound.
Instead I slid my fingers into my pocket and pressed the locket. The chain was cool. I eased it open. Inside was a tiny portrait, a woman I did not know, smiling like a secret. On the back, in Mom’s handwriting: Always my girl. My knees went weak. The funeral became a threshold. I could deliver Mom’s final instruction, or protect the story we’d been fed. I stepped out into the cold sun and made a decision I had never let myself make before. I would follow the trail, quietly, at midnight.
