The Secret Letters by Abby Bardi Page A

making googly eyes at her, and when he was around she seemed to let go of her grudge against the world for a moment. The rest of the time, she put up a good front, but I wouldn’t call her a contented person, especially not after he died. He had a heart attack while shoveling snow off the neighbors’ driveway during a blizzard, and it was two years before my mother spoke to those neighbors again. She said they should have shoveled their own fucking snow.
    Pam had ordered me to go the attic and carry down some boxes. She decided that to avoid having to pay for a dumpster, we were going to have to start leaving loads of trash out every week, and we needed to step up our game. I had already carried down seventeen boxes full of old canceled checks. Norma wanted us to have any papers professionally shredded for security reasons, but Pam said that was bullshit and ignored her. I’d never thought about what happened to things like bank accounts when a person died. I knew my mother was gone and not coming back, but there were parts of my brain that hadn’t quite figured it out yet, so every time I ran into something that made me think she was still around, those parts woke up to her loss all over again and felt surprise and pain so dumb it embarrassed me. One time in her closet I was going through clothes that still smelled like her and said to Pam, “Do you ever get the feeling she’s still around somewhere?”
    â€œOf course,” she said. There was no need to discuss it further.
    I was just about to haul another box of ancient garbage down the pull-down ladder Frank had installed, one of his many home improvements when he moved in, when I noticed something. On the side of the box was something that looked like a fishhook, but from a different angle, a J. I tore into the box, tossing aside a pile ofcrumbling Woman’s Day magazines and some recipe cards in Mom’s handwriting. I was beginning to wonder if maybe the symbol on the side of the box really was just a fishhook when I noticed a tiny black address book. I grabbed it and flipped through it. Each page was crammed with addresses of relatives in West Virginia and North Carolina, and a lot of names I didn’t recognize. There was a John Babcock in Pennsylvania, and at first I got really excited, but then I remembered he was Cousin Velma’s ex-husband. There was another J. in the D’s, but when I looked at it more carefully, I realized it was Joelle Duckworth, one of my mother’s friends from high school.
    But when I got to the F’s, there it was. The minute I saw it, I knew it was my J. There was an address in Flagstaff, Arizona, and there in Mom’s handwriting, the name “J. Fallingwater.”
    ***
    Even Pam was more or less convinced. “It does stand to reason,” she said slowly, looking at the address. “I don’t know who else she knew in Arizona. I don’t remember her ever mentioning anyone. I wonder if that address is still good. Probably not, but you never know when she wrote it in there. You should write him a letter.”
    â€œYou think?” I breathed in and out carefully so my lungs wouldn’t decide it would be fun to go into spasms.
    â€œSure, why not.”
    â€œWhat would I say?”
    â€œDon’t tell him you’re his long-lost daughter and you want to run a DNA test.”
    â€œOkay, I won’t lead with that.”
    â€œTell him you know he was a friend of Mom’s and you want to let him know she passed away. If he answers, you can try to find out more about him and figure out if he’s the guy who wrote the letters.”
    â€œBut I don’t want to be the one to break it to him. You know who’s really good at that kind of thing?”
    â€œWho?” Pam said. She knew who. She tried to hand me the address book.
    I shoved it back at her.
    â€œJulie, I’m way too busy right now.”
    â€œBut you’re such a good