Tess waited until Saturday morning, with Maya still at Rob's and the house empty, to open it.
She carried the suitcase down from the attic and set it on the living room rug. The latches were stiff; she worked them with her thumbs the way she had as a girl, when she'd opened it every night in the Ellery foster home just to make sure the contents hadn't changed. They never had.
Folded clothes, size small: two pairs of jeans, three t-shirts, a sweater with a hole in the elbow. A toothbrush in a plastic case, the bristles splayed with age. At the bottom, wrapped in a pillowcase yellowed at the folds, the music box.
Tess lifted it out. Tin, painted with a sparrow on a branch, the paint worn where small fingers had held it. She hadn't wound it in years. She set it aside and found the photograph underneath β Cannon Beach, Haystack Rock looming in a gray summer haze, an eight-year-old girl with scraped knees grinning at the camera, her mother behind her with an arm around her shoulders, both of them squinting into the wind. Tess turned it over. In Diana's neat hand: Cannon Beach, July 1998. My Tessie, age 8.
And the note. Folded once, the paper soft as cloth. Three words in the same neat hand.
Be good. I'm sorry.
Tess had memorized it at nine and it had not grown longer in twenty-seven years.
"Mom?"
Tess startled. Maya stood in the doorway in her pajamas, violin case in one hand β Rob must have dropped her off early. Her eyes went straight to the suitcase, the way children's eyes go straight to anything their parents hoped to keep private.
"Hey, baby." Tess's voice was too bright. "I thought you were at Dad's till dinner."
"He had a work call. He said to tell you practice is at four and not to be late this time." Maya set the violin case down and came closer, curious. "What's that?"
Tess considered lying. She'd lied for years by omission β your grandmother died a long time ago had been the story, technically true in every way that mattered. But Maya was ten now, and she'd asked about the hospital, and Tess was too tired to build another wall.
"That's my suitcase," Tess said. "From when I was little. Younger than you."
"Where'd you go?"
"I went to live with some other families for a while." Tess chose her words the way she chose doses β carefully, aware of the weight. "My mom β your grandma β couldn't take care of me. So I stayed with a foster family until I was grown up."
Maya picked up the photograph. "That's you? You look like me."
"Around the eyes, yeah."
"And that's your mom." Maya studied Diana's face. "She looks sad."
"That was a happy day," Tess said, and it came out sharper than she meant. "The beach. We were happy."
Maya was quiet a moment, turning the photo over, reading the back. Then: "Is she the lady at the hospital?"
Tess nodded, because the truth was already out of the bag and lying now would only mean a bigger lie later.
"Are you going to go see her?"
"I'm thinking about it."
"Are you mad at her?"
Tess looked at her daughter β this clear-eyed, violin-playing, entirely unbroken child β and felt the old protective surge, the one that had made her check Maya's breathing a dozen times a night when she was a baby.
"Yes," Tess said honestly. "I'm mad at her. But grown-ups can be mad and still do the right thing. That's kind of the whole job."
Maya seemed to accept this. She picked up the music box. "Does it play?"
Tess almost said no. Instead she took it, found the little key underneath, and wound it β slowly, the mechanism catching, then turning. The lid lifted on its hinge and the cylinder turned, and out came the lullaby, thin and wavering and unmistakable, the tune Diana had sung every night of Tess's childhood.
Maya listened, head tilted. "It's pretty. What are the words?"
Tess's throat closed. She hadn't sung it since she was nine years old. But the words were in her the way vital signs were in her β automatic, permanent.
"Sleep, my sparrow, fold your wings," she sang softly, "the night is soft with quiet things. The morning comes with bread and song, and Mama's love will last long."
Maya leaned against her shoulder. They sat on the rug with the suitcase between them, the music box playing itself out, and Tess wept β silently, the way she'd learned to cry in a house full of other people's children, so no one would hear.
She still could not forgive her. The tears changed nothing. That was the worst part: the music went straight through her like a needle through a vein, and underneath it the anger sat untouched, a stone in deep water.
Her phone rang. Rob. She let it go to voicemail, then listened to the message with the phone pressed to her ear so Maya wouldn't hear the edge in his voice.
"Tess, it's me. Practice is at four, and Maya says you were late last time, so don't. Also β we need to talk about Thanksgiving. I'm asking for the full week, and before you say no, talk to your lawyer. Don't make this a fight."
Tess deleted the message. The full week. Rob had been circling for months β longer practices, longer weekends, the slow campaign of a man who'd decided the divorce settlement was a starting bid. She'd been fighting him off with scheduling and patience, but patience was in short supply this week, and the thought of a custody fight landing on top of everything else made her jaw ache.
She looked at the suitcase, the clothes folded by a woman who'd known she was leaving, the note that had never been enough.
"Come on," she said to Maya, wiping her face. "Let's get you to practice. And I'm not going to be late."
She left the suitcase open on the rug. The music box sat silent now, lid up, the little painted sparrow staring at the ceiling. Tess looked at it once from the doorway, and then she turned off the light.
Chapter 4
Beth