It was unexpectedly painful to see it: spiky and compressed, poorly spelled and punctuated, but it was hers, my gran’s. I had read God knows how many things she’d written in our life together: grocery lists, instructions, recipes, even a few personal notes. There was a bundle of them in my dressing table still.

Sookie, I’m so proud of you graduating from high school. I wish your mom and dad had been here to see you in your cap and gown.

Sookie, please pick up your room, I can’t vacuum if I can’t see the floor.

Sookie, Jason will pick you up after softball practice, I have to go to a meeting of the Garden Club.

I was sure this letter would be different. I was right. She began formally.

Dear Sookie,

I think you’ll find this, if anyone does. There’s nowhere else I can leave it, and when I think you’re ready I’ll tell you where I put it.

Tears welled up in my eyes. She’d been murdered before she thought I was ready. Maybe I never would have been ready.

You know I loved your grandfather more than anything.

I’d thought I’d known that. They’d had a rock-solid marriage . . . I’d assumed. The evidence suggested that might not have been the case.

But I did want chilren so bad, so bad. I felt if I had chilren my life would be perfect. I didn’t realize asking God for a perfect life was a stupid thing to do. I got tempted beyond my ability to resist. God was punishing me for my greed, I guess.

He was so beautiful. But I knew when I saw him that he wasn’t a real person. He told me later he was part human, but I never saw much humanity in him. Your grandfather had left for Baton Rouge, a long trip then. Later that morning we’d had a storm that knocked down a big pine by the driveway so it was blocked. I was trying to saw up the pine so your grandfather would be able to bring the truck back up the driveway. I took a break to go to the back yard to see if the clothes on the line were dry, and he walked out of the woods. When he helped me move the tree—well, he moved it all by himself—I said Thank You, of course. I don’t know if you know this, but if you say Thank You to one of them you’re obligated. I don’t know why, that’s just good manners.