Chapter 9: What Miriam Actually Left Behind
Miriam's sister, Constance, drove up from Bristol on a Saturday.
She had called the week before, after Grace had contacted her about the handwriting samples.
She had provided them without hesitation — the journal, the birthday cards, the notes Miriam had tucked into Constance's coat pockets over the years, the ones she always pretended she hadn't left.
Constance had kept every one.
She arrived at noon with a tin of shortbread and a cardboard box.
Thora met her at the door and studied her with great seriousness.
"You have the same eyes as the lady in the picture," Thora said.
Constance crouched down to her level.
"That's because she was my sister."
"She was my mummy."
"I know." Constance's voice didn't waver, but her eyes did.
"She talked about you all the time.
She said you had her grandmother's curls."
Thora touched her own hair.
"Are they good curls?"
"The very best kind."
We sat in the kitchen.
Thora played in the garden where we could see her through the glass.
Constance set the box on the table.
"I should have come sooner," she said.
"After the funeral.
I kept meaning to and then I kept not doing it.
Grief is strange that way."
"It is."
"When Grace told me what Heloise had done — what she'd forged —" She stopped.
"Miriam and Heloise fell out, Daniel.
Did you know that?"
I looked up.
"No."
"About two years before Miriam got sick.
I don't know the full details.
Miriam didn't want to talk about it.
But she told me once that Heloise had asked her for money.
A significant amount.
And Miriam had said no." Constance looked at her hands.
"After that they barely spoke.
So when Heloise turned up at the funeral, I was surprised.
I thought perhaps she had come to make peace." She paused.
"I didn't say anything to you.
I thought it wasn't my place."
"You couldn't have known."
"No.
But I should have trusted what I felt." She looked at the box.
"I brought you some things.
Things of Miriam's that I thought Thora should have when she's older.
Letters she wrote.
Photographs.
A notebook she kept the year Thora was born."
She lifted the notebook from the box and set it on the table between us.
It was small and green, soft-covered, the pages slightly swollen from years of being held and handled.
Miriam's name was written inside the front cover in her own hand — the real hand, nothing like the forgery.
I opened it to the first page.
*Thora slept for four hours straight last night,* Miriam had written.
*Daniel stood over the crib for forty minutes just watching her breathe.
He thought I was asleep.
I wasn't.
I watched him watching her and I thought: whatever else happens, this is the thing I got right.*
I closed the notebook.
Constance was quiet.
Outside, Thora was turning slow circles in the garden with her arms out, watching the sky.
"She knew," I said.
"Miriam knew who I was."
"She always did," Constance said.
"That's why she married you."
I set my hand on the notebook.
The cover was warm from the box, from the car, from the years of Constance carrying it carefully from place to place.
"Will you stay for dinner?" I asked.
May you like
Constance looked out at Thora in the garden.
"I was hoping you'd ask," she said.
