Now my mother was gone, and Raven was walking toward me with one hand closed around something.
“Maeve.”
I turned.
Her eyes were swollen.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
She nodded, then opened her hand.
A small brass key lay across her palm.
“What is that?”
“Your mom told me to give you this only after she was gone.”
I stared at her.
“What does it open?”
“She said you’d know when you found it.”
My chest tightened.
“Why didn’t she give it to me herself?”
Raven hesitated.
“Maybe because she knew you’d put it somewhere safe and avoid finding out.”
That hit harder than it should have.
“You don’t know me.”
“No,” she said. “But Doris did.”
For one ugly second, grief turned into anger.
“Why did my mother trust you with this?”
Raven’s expression softened.
“I didn’t know her better than you did, Maeve.”
“Then why do you have the key?”
“Because I knew a part of her you didn’t.”
Before I could ask which part, my husband, Tom, appeared near the doors with my coat.
Raven stepped back.
“Don’t put it in a drawer.”
Then she left.
I stood there with the key digging into my palm and one question I couldn’t stop hearing.
What had my mother been hiding from me?
The first time I saw Raven, she was drinking tea from Mom’s good china and sitting in my father’s old chair.
I stopped in the kitchen doorway with two grocery bags cutting into my fingers.
“Mom?”
My mother, Doris, looked up. At 73, she was still happiest in that same little kitchen, with her garden outside and a book usually open somewhere nearby.
“There you are, Maeve.”
The young woman beside her turned.
She couldn’t have been much older than 25. She wore black from neck to boots, tattoos covered both forearms, and several silver piercings caught the light when she moved.
“This is Raven,” Mom said. “She’s a friend.”
Raven stood. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
I set the groceries down, still looking at Dad’s chair.
Raven noticed.
“Am I sitting somewhere I shouldn’t?”
“No,” I said too quickly. “It’s fine. So how do you two know each other?”
“We met over coffee,” Mom said.
“At the bookstore café,” Raven added. “She told me I was reading a terrible book.”
Mom smiled. “It was terrible.”
“I thought I was spending the afternoon with you.”
Mom’s smile faded.
“We can do that next Saturday.”
“You’re asking me to leave?”
“We’re in the middle of something private.”
Raven glanced between us. “I can go.”
“No,” Mom said too quickly.
That stung.
I picked up my purse.
