She studied the writing on the front and then ran a finger across the postmark. “Where’s it been all this time?”
I gave her a brief account of the twenty-eight-year delay. “That’s her friend Clara’s return address. She mailed the package for your mom.”
“Is this my mother’s handwriting or hers?”
“Your mother’s, I believe. I didn’t think to ask.”
“And Father Xavier was her parish priest?”
“He’s still at St. Elizabeth’s. I talked to him Saturday. Were you raised Catholic?”
“No, but Bill was and we intend to raise the baby Catholic.” She put her arms around the mailer and held it against her chest. “This is warm. Does it feel warm to you?”
I put a hand on the surface. “Not particularly,” I said. Since it was clear she wasn’t ready to explore the contents, I tried a change of subject. “What’s your due date?”
“A month. April twenty-ninth.”
“You know the gender?”
She smiled and shook her head. “We want to be surprised. Bill says most of life’s surprises aren’t that good.”
“How’s his practice going?”
“Great. He’s doing well.”
The exchange was curious in that we looked through the windshield more often than we looked at each other. In the past I’ve had similar conversations; the vehicle’s close quarters creates an intimacy you might not otherwise attain.
“Don’t you want to open that?”
She looked down. “I’m scared. What if I find something that hurts my heart?”
“No reason to assume the worst.”
“Do you know what’s in here?”
“I do. The mailer wasn’t sealed, so I thought it would be all right.”
“Tell me. Just so I’ll be prepared. Then I’ll look.”
“She wanted you to have the Bible she was given at her confirmation. There’s also a red-bead rosary and a Mother’s Day card you made for her.”
“I made her a card?”
“With your handprint. You must have been three. You have an April birthday, yes?”
“The twelfth.”
“She tucked in a card for your fourth.”
She took another look at the postmark. “You’re saying in late March, when she put this together, she knew what she was planning to do?”
I gave myself a moment to respond. This was treacherous territory. I wasn’t convinced Lenore had committed suicide, but I wasn’t going to sit there and suggest her father murdered her mother or drove her to kill herself. “It might have been equivalent to her making out a will. You do it for those you love. It doesn’t mean you expect to die anytime soon.”
She considered the idea. “You don’t think she was giving things away because she knew she wouldn’t be needing them?”
“I never met your mother, so I can’t answer that. It’s clear she loved you.”
“You really think so?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
“Why didn’t she ask for help?”
“She did, but I’m not sure anyone realized how much trouble she was in. People were worried, but not alarmed, if you can see the difference.”
“Like who?”
“Father Xavier was one. And Clara Doyle.”
“You talked to them?”
“A couple of days ago, yes. Clara mailed the package and Father Xavier held on to it, thinking one day you’d be in touch and he’d give it to you then. The mailer ended up in storage, and I guess people forgot it was there.”
“Why did my mom use Clara’s address and not her own?”
I was walking on eggshells here and I spoke with care. “I believe she was worried the mailer might be returned to the sender. Sometimes the post office does that for no apparent reason. She didn’t want it to show up at the house again.”
“Why?”
April was worse than a three-year-old. What was I supposed to say? I wanted to bang my head on the dashboard, but I managed to restrain myself. I understood her curiosity. There were things about my parents I’d never know and damn few people left to ask. “Possibly because your father wasn’t Catholic and she didn’t want him to know she was giving you items of religious significance. This is just a guess.”
“So you’re saying she did it behind his back?”
“You could look at it that way.”
“That doesn’t sound like a loving relationship.”
“Doesn’t to me, either, but marriages come in all shapes and sizes. Some work and some don’t.”
“How did you end up with this?”
“It’s a long story and really not that important.”
“It is to me.”
I was reluctant to go into it, but avoiding an explanation would only create more questions. “I came across it when I was going through the personal effects of a friend who died. He had this box of old files that should have gone to a shredding company years ago. I went through to see if there were documents I should pull before the contents were destroyed.”
“Did your friend know my mother?”
Despairingly, I said, “Honestly, April, I wasn’t prepared for all these questions. I expected to hand this over and let you make of it what you would.”