PART 16 – The Date on Mother’s Letter Was Only Six Days Before the Move, and That Detail Would Not Let Me Rest

I kept looking at the date.

February 3rd.

Six days before Mom was moved out of the Oakwood house.

I had written it at the top of several pages in my notebook.

I couldn't stop thinking about the timing.

Mom had written the letter while she was still living in the house.

She had identified the blue tin.

She had described the trust.

She had written that she had not agreed to the sale.

Then, six days later, she was gone.

I wanted to understand what happened during those six days.

I called Mr. Fenwick.

I asked him whether the date on the letter made a difference to the review.

He said it was relevant because it showed what Mom had recorded before the move and the sale.

I asked whether the letter should be preserved in its original condition.

He confirmed that it should.

I placed it back inside the manila envelope.

I had begun to think of that envelope as something more than paper.

It was the one thing Mom had managed to leave where Karen couldn't simply explain it away.

I also thought about the staircase.

The third wooden tread.

The blue tin.

The old hiding place my father had used.

My mother had chosen a place connected to both of them.

I wondered whether she had remembered my father whenever she opened it.

I wondered whether she had felt safer knowing the ledger was hidden there.

I didn't know.

I only knew she had written down the location carefully.

Later that afternoon, Karen sent me a message.

She said she wanted to discuss the situation without involving outsiders.

I read it several times.

Mr. Fenwick was our parents' attorney.

Tyler and Hannah were the people who had found the letter.

The records belonged to Mom.

I didn't consider any of those people unnecessary outsiders.

I replied that the documents needed to be reviewed.

Karen didn't respond immediately.

Then she sent another message asking whether I intended to challenge everything she had done.

I didn't answer that question directly.

I wasn't interested in arguing over a telephone.

I wanted the facts.

I wanted to know whether the trust had been respected.

I wanted to know what happened to the proceeds from the sale.

I wanted to know what the ledger recorded.

And I wanted to understand why Mom had felt she needed to leave a letter for the next owners.

That last question stayed with me most of all.

My mother hadn't written to me directly on the outside of the envelope.

She had written to whoever bought the house.

She had apparently understood that a future owner might be the only person who could discover what she had hidden.

That meant she had planned for the possibility that nobody in the family would listen.

I sat with that thought for a long time.

It made me sad.

It also made me determined.

I called Mom on Sunday.

She was having a quieter day.

We didn't talk about the letter.

I asked whether she wanted me to visit.

She said she would like that.

I told her I would arrange it.

Then she asked whether I had been sleeping.

I said I had.

She told me not to worry too much.

I nearly cried.

She was the one who had needed protection.

And she was still trying to comfort me.

After we finished talking, I looked at the envelope again.

February 3rd.

The date was written in my mother's hand.

I couldn't change what had happened during those six days.

But I could make sure the letter, the tin, and the trust documents were examined together.

I wasn't going to let the matter disappear simply because it was uncomfortable.

For Mom's sake.

For Emily's sake.

And because the truth deserved to be known, even if it changed what remained of my family.

Click here to continue reading: PART 17: I Went Back Through the Dates, and the More I Compared Them, the Less Karen’s Explanation Made Sense