The bank employee searched the archived records.
At first, she shook her head.
Then she stopped.
“There was a box.”
My heart jumped.
“My mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was transferred after her death.”
“Is anything left?”
The employee looked at me.
“I don’t know. But we have records.”
The box had been preserved because of an abandoned-property process.
There wasn’t a fortune inside.
There were copies of financial documents.
Letters.
A few photographs.
And one small savings certificate in my name.
My mother had opened it when I was sixteen.
She had added to it whenever she could.
The amount wasn’t enormous.
But it was enough.
Enough to pay off the remainder of my car loan.
Enough to cover several months of rent.
Enough to give me something I hadn’t had since the divorce.
Breathing room.
I sat in my car outside the bank and cried.
Not because of the money.
