PART 2
The first bag was full of my clothes.
My leggings, folded in thirds.
The nursing pajamas, still in their packaging.
They smelled like someone else’s laundry soap, and I wanted to cr*y from relief and from rage at the same time.
“Forty-one pieces,” Elaine said.
“I counted them at Tara’s apartment at ten past six this morning.”
Nick finally spoke.
“Mom, it was a misunderstanding. Tara needed help.”
She turned to me.
“Five pieces had already been sold, sweetheart.”
“I messaged each buyer.”
“Four of them drove back before nine.”
She lifted a garment bag from the third shopping bag and laid it across a kitchen chair.
Sage green.
The belt still looped around the waist.
“The fifth buyer,” she said, “was Courtney Pham.”
“She sat in my fifth-grade classroom in 2005. She cr*ed when she read my message and drove it over herself.”
I touched the fabric.
It was soft and a little wrinkled, and it held a faint smell of coffee and strangers.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Elaine squeezed my shoulder once.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“Okay. You got the clothes. Can we drop this now?”
The Rolex slid forward on his wrist as he moved.
Elaine’s eyes moved to the second bag.
“Why,” she asked, “do you keep looking at that one?”
Elaine reached into the second bag and set a worn shoebox on the table.
Someone had written on it in blue ink.
N. DON’T TOUCH.
It was Tara’s.
“I found this in your sister’s closet,” Elaine said, “underneath her winter boots.”
Nick’s face lost every bit of color.
“That’s not yours, Mom.”
“No,” she said.
“It isn’t yours, either.”
She lifted the lid.
Inside were envelopes.
I counted fourteen.
Each one addressed to Anna M. Keller, in care of Tara Keller, at an apartment complex in Ankeny.
The return address on every envelope was the same.
Abbott & Lowe, LLP. Attorneys at Law. Des Moines, Iowa.
“I don’t know these people,” I said.
But the name under the logo caught in my mind like a splinter.
The Ruth Hollis Family Trust.
My grandmother’s name.
“Nick,” I said slowly.
“You told me Grandma’s estate was mostly debts.”
“You said the house had to be sold to cover her care.”
“You said there was nothing left, and you said you would handle the paperwork so I could grieve.”
“Anna—”
He opened his mouth and closed it.
Elaine held the top page out to me with two fingers.
