Chapter 4: The Dress She Made Before
The garden held its breath.
"What do you mean she didn't make it for me?" I said.
David sat back down.
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, the way he does when he is about to say something he has rehearsed.
"She made it before you were born," he said.
"She made it for your mother."
I looked at Grandma.
She was looking at her own hands in her lap.
"Mum never wore it?"
"Your mother was born in November," Grandma said quietly.
"The dress was for summer.
By the time the summer came she'd grown out of it." A pause.
"I folded it away.
I kept it.
I don't know why exactly.
I just couldn't let it go."
"And then I came along."
"And then you came along.
Four years old and the right size and it was July." She almost smiled.
"It fit you perfectly.
I took that photograph the same afternoon."
I sat with that for a moment.
The dress in the photograph — the one I had looked at my whole life as though it were made for me, as though it were mine — had been waiting in a drawer for thirty years before I ever existed.
"Why didn't you ever say?"
"You loved that photograph," she said simply.
"You used to ask me to get it out.
You'd carry it around the house."
"I was four."
"You were four.
And it made you happy.
And making you happy made me happy.
So I said nothing."
David cleared his throat.
"There's more."
"David." The warning again, sharper this time.
"She's going to find out eventually," he said.
"Better from us."
I looked between them.
"Find out what?"
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced an envelope.
Old.
The paper had gone soft at the corners the way paper does when it has been handled many times over many years.
"Your grandmother wrote a letter," he said.
"A long time ago.
She gave it to me to keep.
She told me to give it to you after she was gone." He set it on his knee.
"She changed her mind this morning.
In the car."
"I want her to have it while I can see her read it," Grandma said.
"Or near enough see her."
I stared at the envelope.
My name was on the front.
Not my married name.
My name as a child, in handwriting I recognized from birthday cards going back thirty years.
"When did you write this?" I asked.
"A long time ago."
"How long?"
She thought about it.
"You were having your first round of treatment.
The first one that didn't take."
My chest tightened.
"That was nine years ago."
"Yes."
"You wrote me a letter nine years ago and gave it to David to keep."
"I didn't know how things would go," she said.
"I wanted you to have something.
In case I wasn't here when they did." She paused.
"And in case they didn't."
The envelope sat on David's knee between us.
None of us reached for it.
"What's in it?" I asked.
"Read it and you'll know."
"Tell me first."
She turned her face toward me.
The light was low enough now that I could see how much effort it took her to track my position.
She was working from shape and memory and the sound of my voice.
"It's everything I never said out loud," she said.
"Because I thought I had more time to say it properly."
David held the envelope out to me.
My hand didn't move.
"She carried it to the car this morning," he said quietly.
"She carried it ninety minutes.
She's been holding onto it since January."
I took it.
The paper was warm from his jacket.
I turned it over.
The seal had been opened and refolded, not re-glued — she had read it herself, recently, before deciding to give it.
"You read it again," I said.
"Before today."
"I wanted to make sure it still said what I meant," she said.
"Things change.
I didn't want you reading something I no longer believed."
"And does it?
Still say what you meant?"
The smallest pause.
"Every word," she said.
I held the envelope in both hands and did not open it.
Not yet.
The garden was almost empty now.
The paddling pool sat flat and still.
One of my daughter's shoes was on the grass near the lavender, just one, and I had no idea where the other one was.
"Read it at home," Grandma said.
"When she's asleep.
When it's quiet."
I nodded.
Then she said: "There's a name in it.
Halfway through.
A name you won't recognize."
I looked up.
"Don't skip to it," she said.
May you like
"Read it from the beginning.
The name won't make sense unless you read it from the beginning."
