I turned.
“Everybody said you did.”
“I know.”
“Dad said you emptied Grandma’s house before probate.”
“I took some things.”
“So?”
“But these weren’t from your grandmother’s house.”
I frowned.
“Then where?”
“Your mother gave them to me.”
The room shifted.
“When?”
“Three months before she died.”
I stared.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Evelyn looked toward the cases.
“Because she was frightened.”
“Of what?”
“Being forgotten.”
I laughed bitterly.
“She was thirty-nine.”
“She’d been having headaches.”
My stomach tightened.
“What headaches?”
Evelyn hesitated.
“She told me something felt wrong.”
“She had seen a doctor.”
“They thought migraines.”
“She didn’t want to frighten your father.”
“I never knew that.”
“No.”
“She didn’t want you to know either.”
I stared at the cases.
“Why give you everything?”
“She didn’t.”
“Not at first.”
Evelyn walked toward the wooden box.
“She had been recording family stories for years.”
