I leaned over, breathing her in. She smelled of strawberries and milk. It was a smell you wanted in your life forever, like laundry on the line, or the dusty ears of a well-loved teddy bear. I imagined it was the smell of fresh shampoo. I liked to think she’d taken measures, too.
When she finished her second cookie she looked up expectantly, with a “now what shall we do?” look on her face that indicated she had no real ideas of her own. I was beginning to see a trend; I could ride this trend, yes.
“I thought,” I began, “that in a little while, it might be fun to go out and take some photographs together, then go have lunch.”
“Photographs of what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, whatever we find. There’s a squirrel’s nest in the park where they swing from the trees like chimpanzees.”
She shrugged, which was better than lodging an objection. She paused then said, “You said in a little while. What about now?”
“Now,” I leaned in conspiratorially, “I thought I’d show you another family secret. Like you asked about.” I picked up a flashlight I’d laid on the sideboard.
“Really?” she said, eyes wide.
“You see, today is my mother’s birthday, and one of the secrets is about her.”
She followed me to the attic stairs and when I pulled them down, a puff of dust came with them. I told her to go up first but she hesitated, so I said she could follow me. I turned on the flashlight and we walked up. I headed straight to the dark brown trunks. I had nestled the small safe in one of them earlier in the day, for dramatic effect.
“This,” I said, kneeling down with some effort, “is where the photo albums were.”
I opened one of the trunks and pulled out the safe. “And this,” I said with a flourish, “is almost all that’s left of my mother’s fortune.” I dialed the combination, aware that the metallic spin mesmerized her. I pulled out the ring box and held it aloft. Her eyes were wide and I nodded my permission.
As she opened the box, I held the flashlight above her so the gem would sparkle. Her mouth dropped open.
“Did you used to be rich?”
“Yes. My mother came from a very wealthy family. They owned a lot of railroad land, and a lot of land in general. When I was growing up we had three houses in different cities and servants in each one.”
“Wow, Grandma, that’s cool.”
“It was, rather. Until my father started stealing from my mother, liquidating stock portfolios and hiding money in offshore accounts. That was not so cool.”
“Did he go to jail?” Ellie whispered.
“No, my mother didn’t know what was going on at first. And my father was so nimble, nothing could be proved.”
I told her that when my father left he said he was going on an extended trip, doing business in Hong Kong; the day he left I went shopping for a prom gown, oblivious. When I came home I rushed into the living room to show my mother, tearing open the box from Bryant’s Department Store, exclaiming over the turquoise satin, too giddy over my purchase to take notice of my mother’s detached distance. She told me the dress was beautiful and that she had to go down to the bank, that there was a “glitch” with one of their accounts. That’s the word she used, “glitch.” She came back from the meeting dumbfounded and dizzy, but said it was nothing, she just had a little headache. She kept the truth from me for over a month, and it was only when June arrived, and it was time to go to Nantucket, that she broke the news: while I had gone to my graduation parties and prom, she had sold her family’s cabin in the Adirondacks, and both her Nantucket homes, even the cottage, to pay for taxes. In less than a year’s time, she would sell our main house and move into a cottage on Aunt Caro’s estate. She’d managed to hide only the emerald when she got wind of what was going on.
“How old were you?” Ellie asked.
“Nearly seventeen.”
“Did he take anything from you?”
“Well, I just explained, Ellie, that—”
“Did he take your clothes or your toys?”
“Well, no, but he took away my inheritance, my family home, my summerhouse and summer plans, everything.”
“So you couldn’t go to college?”
“Well, no, he made provisions to pay for that. But that’s all.”
“Oh,” she nodded. “What about when he died?”
“He left