“Deal,” I tell him and he heads out the door with a clean red T-shirt and jeans in his hand. As soon as the door shuts, I exhale loudly as I move my bag onto the bed. My fingers shake as I unzip it, and then I dig past the dress to the bottom of the bag and remove the box addressed to me, the return address from a Gary Flemmerton in Montana, but that’s not who it’s from, at least not according to the note inside the box, which was written by mother’s mom—my grandma. And it makes no sense, because I’ve never talked to her before, yet she took it upon herself to write me a note and send me some stuff of my mother’s. It’s weird, yet at the same time it’s got me thinking things I don’t want to think, like maybe I could meet her, but then again, do I really want to let more people in my life?

The note’s pretty simple and when I take it out of the box and read it again, I have the same reaction: confusion.

Ella, I know you don’t know me and I’m so sorry about that. There were things that you probably don’t understand, or maybe you do. Maybe Maralynn told you about me. Maybe she didn’t. But regardless, I was going through the attic, cleaning it out, and found some of her old stuff. I thought that you’d like to have it. I was going to keep it myself, but it’s just too painful. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to keep it. I just thought you might like it.

Then she signed her name in flawless cursive handwriting.

I’d only ever met my grandmother once and that was at my mother’s funeral. We didn’t say anything to each other and my father didn’t talk to her. It makes no sense why she’d give me her phone number like I’d been the one avoiding her all these years. She could have come up to me at the funeral and said something, but instead she sat across from my dad, my brother, and me in the barely occupied church while the minister preached about life after death. I think she might have smiled at me once, but I wasn’t completely sure at the time, nor did I care, because I was in a place where guilt was possessing my heart and mind. Plus, from what I knew about my grandmother, she wasn’t a very nice person.