I open the Bible with shaking fingers. It feels like I’m touching something intimate and private, and I am. Personal Bibles, even though I’ve never owned one, always seem mystical. Like the longer someone carries one, the more their spirit lives in the pages. As I flip through the thin, small-print paper, her smell wafts over my nose: verbena and lemon, mixed with a bit of leather. The last section is blank, for notes. On the very last page, in curling script and dated just last year, is a small note.

Lord, she is already stronger than I ever was.

I worry her challenges will be just as powerful.

I worry that I am running out of time.

Please, protect her and give me the strength to let her go.

“Got something else for ya too, kid. It’s in the car. Be right back.” My dad puts his napkin aside and shoves out of the booth. I nod and stare down at the Bible in my hands, letting the gift of her words wash over me.

My mother had carried so much pain from her own loss. Maybe the exact things Patricia said I had inside me: traumatic grief, PCBD grief. Then, after I was born, it became anxiety. Maybe she’d had the feeling like she could explode. Maybe she’d had my fear and fury. And she hid it from me as best she could.

Just knowing that we have this in common, knowing my feelings are an echo of hers, is a revelation. It makes me sad that she suffered. It makes me wish I could talk to her about it. It makes me want to tell her that I understand. I’ve been chasing the hidden truth for so long, and now I find out that one of her truths already lives inside me. It makes me feel closer to her somehow, and right now, that feels like enough.

When my dad slides back into the booth, he’s laughing under his breath. “I thought about maybe donating her clothes. You know how many clothes she had. And shoes, my God.”

I smile. “Tall order. You might have to take a few trips to the donation center.”

“Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “Bringin’ myself to do it’s another thing. Rich Glover down at the shop lost his wife last year. He says that once you get rid of their clothes, that’s when you know they’re really gone.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, I was in the closet the other day, and I found this. Thought you might like to have it.”