Janet had only one more place to look—the attic. That was because as the oldest of five, it was her duty to prepared the estate of her recently deceased mother. It wasn’t much of an estate, more like an old ranch-style house crammed with yard sale purchases, in a small neighborhood at the edge of a sleepy southern town. But Janet took her time and with Carol’s help (one of her younger siblings,) they were almost finished cataloging everything in the house.
All that remained to be done was the attic. Walking into the garage, Janet makes her way directly to the pull-down set of stairs. With one hand, she grabs the ping pong ball at the end of the cord and starts to tug. She smiles at the ping pong ball, which was put there by her father who used it as a measure of where to stop the car when entering the garage.
“What do you think is up there?” Carol asks, entirely certain she is not going to be the one to go into the attic.
“Probably that old, dusty Christmas tree in a box Mom put up each year. Maybe some antique Christmas tree ornaments? There can’t be much, right?”
Janet gives the cord a good tug and the stairs drop. Reaching up, Janet unfolds them.
“You wanna do this, or are you going to try and make me?” Carol quips.
“Why don’t you just finish up here in the garage with all of the stuff from Dad’s workshop, and I’ll go up. Don’t run away if I scream that there’s a monster in the attic!”
“I am so running away because I don’t want to get eaten by a monster.”
“How did I know that was gonna be your response? Anyway, I’ll see what’s there.”
The stairs creak as Janet slowly ascends to a place she’s never been. She spots a light switch nearby and pokes her head into the attic. She flicks it on and two fluorescent lights wink to life, illuminating an ample space.
“What do you see?”
“The attic is larger than I’d expected. I see the Christmas tree. What should I do with it?”
“That ratty old box?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you toss it down to me, and I’ll just put it out on the curb, with all the other garbage to be picked up. The garbage trucks should be coming around soon.”
“Sounds good . . . watch out here comes the tree,” Janet says as she picks up the box and tosses it down to her sister.
She stands, taking in what needs to be removed, when she sees a square, green suitcase.
You’re not a suitcase, though, are you? More like, it’s a, oh, what do they call those things? I see them at yard sales occasionally. Oh yeah, a train case.
“What could be in here? Probably some old clothes? Maybe this is where Mom kept those recipes she would never share?”
“Hey! Are you talking to me? If so, speak up. I can barely hear you.”
“Nope.”
“What? Then who are you talking to? Are you on the phone again?”
Janet chuckles as she responds.
“No, there’s an old suitcase up here, and I was just talking to the suitcase. I’m gonna be up here a minute.”
“You were talking to a suitcase? Do you frequently talk to inanimate objects?”
Janet ignores her sister and kneels, pulling it close enough that the insides might be easier to see when she opens it. She reads the name of the suitcase, which is spelled out in red, white, and blue, the letters set into a silver badge on the front.
“American Tourister. Wow. That goes back a few years. Why would Mom keep it up here?”
The sight of the weathered leather, faded stickers, and chrome twist latches awaken a sense of curiosity and anticipation, prompting thoughts about the life it once accompanied and the secrets it might conceal. Janet twists open the latches with both hands. Shifting her weight, she accidentally rests a knee on an old bag of mothballs, which splits open. The scent of mothballs engulfs her, and she coughs a few times.
“You okay up there?”
“Yes, I just got assaulted by a bag of mothballs. Give me a minute.”
Below, Carol shakes her head, “Yeah, Mom loved her mothballs.”
Opening the case, a bundle of letters catches Janet’s eye. Next to the letters, she sees a handful of faded black and white photographs.
A bead of sweat rolls down her face as she realizes that staying in the attic much longer might not be a great idea.
But how to get this downstairs?
Calling down to her sister, Janet has an idea.
“Hey, is that rope still hanging on the wall above the freezer?”
“Yes, it is. Why exactly do you need a rope in the attic?” Carol wonders if the heat has gotten to her sister.
“Get it and throw it up to me, okay?”
Muttering to herself, Carol grabs the rope, walks over to the staircase, and goes halfway up the stairs. With one toss, the rope lands near enough to Janet that she only has to pivot slightly, trying not to disturb the bag of mothballs.
“Thank you,” she says as she closes the suitcase, making sure to twist lock the latches. Then she ties the rope to the handle.
“Look out below! I have a suitcase coming down. Grab it for me, please?”
“Where did you find this?”
“Is that a rhetorical question? I thought you knew I was up in the attic? I couldn’t have found it anywhere else.”
“Whatever,” Carol mutters, shaking her head.
Once Janet descends the ladder from the attic to the garage, she unties the rope and takes the suitcase into the dining room.
“Did you get a look inside when you were up there?” Carol asks.
“Not really, that’s why I decided to bring it down. I saw some letters and some old photos. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want to throw it away.”
Janet twists the latches again and exposes the suitcase’s contents to the bright sunlight streaming through the bay windows. Reaching in, she gingerly takes a packet of letters tied together with what was once purple yarn and places them on the table. Next, she retrieves three stacks of photographs tied with a similar yarn. In a side pocket, she finds several rolls of quarters in bankrolls. It’s as if the quarters had been purchased from the bank or perhaps rolled at home to bring them to the bank to be deposited or exchanged for paper money. The wrappers are very old.
Janet takes a deep breath as her heart begins to race. She can feel the emotion building as she looks at the handwriting outside the top envelope.
Carol recognizes it too.
“That’s Mom’s handwriting.”
“Yep. That’s her handwriting, alright, but I don’t know who that is,” Janet says, pointing at the name at the top of the envelope.
“Rose? Rose, who?”
“No idea. Isn’t your middle name Rose? Maybe it’s something she wrote for you.”
“Yes my middle name is Rose. And, if it’s something Mom wrote for me, she never hinted at anything like this. So, are you going to open it?”
Not sure what to do next, Janet spreads all the letters out on the table. She does the photographs next. The sisters spent a few minutes looking closely at the photos until Carol points to one with a question.
“That’s Mom, right? And that’s grandma next to her. But who is this girl who looks a little bit younger than Mom in the picture?”
“I don’t know. Like you, I’m seeing these for the first time. Maybe that’s a friend of Moms from school when she was a kid. Could be a neighbor. I don’t know.”
“If we read a letter or one or two of the letters, maybe we will understand. Maybe Mom wrote letters to this neighborhood kid and never sent them.”
“Like a pen-pal kind of thing?”
“Maybe?”
“She was kind of old to be a pen pal, don’t you think?”
“What if it’s to a prisoner from her prison ministry the church used to do, and she just never mailed it. According to our good friend Elizabeth Cottrell, you’re never too old to start writing letters to friends.”
“I agree.”
Looking at the pile of letters, Carol is curious.
“Are they all addressed to the same person?”
“Yes. It looks like all of them are addressed to Rose.”
“Since Mom and Dad are both dead, what harm can it cause for us to read them? Maybe we’ll find out who Rose is.”
“I don’t know. I feel kind of weird about it. Maybe they shouldn’t be opened.”
“If you’re not gonna open one and read it, I will.”
Feeling somewhat pressured by her little sister Janet opens the topmost envelope, pulls the letter out, and scans the writing. This doesn’t sit well with Carol.
“Hey! I forbid you to read it silently. I wanna hear it, and you need to read it to me.”
“Like you’re in grade school and the teacher is reading just before recess?”
“Yes. Exactly like that! I recognize Mom’s handwriting. I could never be that precise in my letter formation. I’m so glad we have computers now.”
“If you ever have a boyfriend and want to write him a note about how much you love him, you gonna write to him on your computer?”
“Heck yeah. I’m not gonna sit down and write anything by hand! I can’t even read what I write, so I don’t expect someone else to read it and be able to understand it. And what if it’s a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend?”
“I’m glad Mom is dead if that’s where you’re going. I don’t know what happened to your generation,” Janet mutters.
“You know, you’re pretty old for someone as young as you are. How about you just read me the letter?”
“Okay, here goes.”
“Wait, is there a date on it?”
“Yes. It is . . .” Carol hears Janet inhale and wonders if she’s about to cry.
“Janet?” she whispers. “What is it?”
“This is dated the week before Mom died.”
“Oh.” Carol bites her lip, trying to quell the emotion she feels building. “How did Mom have the strength to climb into the attic to hide these letters?”
“Don’t know. Yet another mystery about our mother.”
“Her heart attack was so unexpected. Maybe we were never supposed to find these.” After just a few moments, Carol speaks softly enough to be heard barely. “Read it.”
“Okay.”
With a short pause, Janet begins to read the first letter.
“My Dear Rose: Though it has been more than eighty years since your untimely death, your loss, no, my loss, is just as raw and emotional as it was the day we learned of your death. When my mother took me out of band practice that afternoon, I knew something must have happened, but I was ill-prepared for what came next. Mother was crying, as was Poppa. I’d never seen him cry. Today, in the year of our Lord 2023, the world is very different from the one in which we lost you. Every year, I’ve written a letter like this one for your birthday. I wish I could send it to you. Of course, I know you’ll never read any of these letters, but I write them anyway. As I’ve aged, I’ve grown more emotional regarding the mysterious details of your death. There have been tears in every letter, sentence, and paragraph. But, these letters have certainly been a salve for my soul. I’ve often told you what transpired after you left us, how I went to college, met a man, married, had children, and things like that. Today I confess something that has begun to weigh heavily on me, and perhaps the time has come to right that mistake. Did I ever tell you that I never told my family of the twin sister I lost at the tender age of 11 . . .”
“WHAT?” Carol interrupted. “Did you just say ‘sister?’”
Janet put down the letter, goosebumps rippling across her arms. Without saying a word, she nods.
Carol shifts over to the photographs, looking for the first one she spotted. With it in hand, she sits next to Janet.
“Flip it over,” Janet says.
What is written on the back takes a few Moments to process.
My mother, my sister Rose and I are in front of our house on Watts Road. This was taken the week before Rose was killed. It was Christmas of 1943, and the world was at war. Uncle Horace was behind the wheel and told the police that he never saw Rose. Perhaps that was true. Mother was devastated, but the family didn’t want Uncle Horace to go to prison. I wish he’d died instead of Rose.
I miss her.
“Oh, my God. Mom had a twin sister.”
Outside, the garbage truck begins its route through the neighborhood.
Inside, both girls are silent for several minutes, trying to process the loss they never knew and the restraint it took for their mother never to tell them. Carol is the first to speak.
“How many letters are there?”
“How do I know?”
Carol jumps up and begins to count. Janet mentally counts along with her sister. When they’re finished, Carol looks at Janet, and both say the same thing.
“Eighty, including the one we’ve opened.”
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
“Is there more in the letter?”
“Yeah, hold on.”
Taking the letter from the table, Janet begins to read again.
“So, dear Rose, as we approach another Christmas season, I’ll look at the three rolls of old quarters Dad was going to give you, and put up the tree we had all those years ago like I do every year. You don’t know this, but I just laughed because my kids have always complained about the tree. They do not know its significance to me, so I just let them complain until it’s time to open the presents.”
“STOP! We have to get that tree box out of the garbage!” Carol screams as she ran at full speed toward the door.
Janet doesn’t try to stop her. She closes her eyes, silent with the knowledge that outside, the garbage truck has already been to their house and is turning onto the next street down.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” she mutters, turning the photograph over in her hands a few times, looking into the face of the aunt she never knew. “Maybe, we should let go of the past.”
Janet hears Carol’s voice getting farther and farther away as she runs after the garbage truck, screaming for the it to stop.
Dropping the letter, Janet reaches for the three rolls of quarters in the side pocket of the train case. The crusty, yellowed paper makes a raspy sound as the rolls rub together in Janet’s hand. Janet wipes tears from her eyes and returns to the letter.
As I hang our mother’s fragile ornaments and drape the tinsel, I know that you and I saw ten Christmastimes together underneath that tree. I wish we’d had more . . .
Then, under the pressure of the moment, Janet squeezes her hands and the eighty-year-old coin paper rips. Quarters spill out of her hand, onto the table in a metal waterfall. Janet sobs silently, her shoulders arching with every breath. Her emotions finally fade, so she addresses her thoughts to her dead mother.
“Oh, Mom. The letters. The photos. And now, the quarters. I guess everything’s out in the open, right?” Janet pauses for a moment, contemplating the future.
“How do I tell the rest of the family? Maybe I don’t. Maybe Carol and I keep your secret. I can’t believe you never told us. Perhaps what’s in this suitcase is your way of telling us. If so, thank you for sharing your attic treasure. I love you. I miss you.”
