Letters in the Yard
The next morning, I drove to my grandmother’s old house. A young couple lived there now, paint swatches taped to the walls, baby toys waiting in the corner. I told them I wanted to check the backyard where I’d spent my childhood summers. They gave me a cautious nod and let me through.
Kneeling beneath the swing tree, spade in hand, I dug where she and I once sat with lemonade glasses sweating in the sun. My shovel struck something metal.
The first one began: “To my dearest heart, they will never understand why. But you will.”
I read them all right there in the dirt, tears smearing the words as I uncovered her stories — her childhood, her regrets, her joys, the man she didn’t marry, the year she forgave God, the stubborn hope she saw in me.
“Money fades,” one letter said. “Stories don’t. I’m giving you mine.”
She hadn’t left me nothing. She had left me her.
