READ THIS LAST.
My hands began trembling.
I placed the unnamed envelope inside my purse, gathered the others, and returned to the church.
Everyone turned when I entered.
“I have something Grandma wanted each of us to receive.”
One by one, I handed out the envelopes.
Then I placed the empty handbag in Grandma’s folded hands.
Exactly as I had promised.
The casket closed.
The locks clicked.
And Grandma Nancy was buried with her handbag.
Nobody opened the letters until after the burial.
At Aunt Susan’s house afterward, I slipped away into a quiet hallway and opened mine.
The first line made me cry.
“My sweet Emily. I am so proud of the woman you have become.”
She wrote about me feeding the neighbor’s cat when I was seven because I was convinced no one else remembered it.
She thanked me for our Sunday calls.
Then the letter changed.
“You are the only one of them from whom I didn’t have to hide anything. This family learned a long time ago that silence was easier than the truth. Each of your parents asked me to keep something buried, and I did.”
