Sitting on the attic floor in the afternoon light, I read until I understood everything.
My mother had inherited the necklace from her mother, and her sister believed it should’ve gone to her instead. It was a wound that never healed: two sisters who’d grown up sharing everything, divided permanently by a single object.
Mom’s sister, my aunt, had died years later, and the estrangement had never resolved itself.
My mother had written:
“I watched my mother’s necklace end a lifelong friendship between two sisters. I will not let it do the same to my children. Let it go with me. Let them keep each other instead.”
I closed the diary and sat with that for a long time.
She didn’t want the necklace buried with her out of superstition or sentiment. She wanted it buried out of love—for Dan and for me.
I called Dan that evening and read him the entry word for word. When I finished, the line went so quiet I checked to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
