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.
Because my mother had been thinking about me.
Even when I didn’t know it.
Especially when I didn’t know it.
That night, I showed Lily the notebook.
She sat beside me on the couch.
“Who is Estelle?”
“A woman who knew Grandma.”
“Did Grandma know her?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you know?”
I smiled sadly.
“Sometimes adults keep things from each other because they think they’re protecting people.”
Lily thought about that.
“Was Grandma protecting you?”
“I think she was trying.”
Lily looked down at the notebook.
Then she pointed to a recipe.
“Can we make this?”
“What is it?”
“Bread.”
I laughed.
“Right now?”
“No. Saturday.”
So Saturday came.
We made Estelle’s bread.
We used too much flour.
The dough stuck to Lily’s fingers.
The first loaf was hard enough to use as a doorstop.
Lily laughed until she had tears in her eyes.
I laughed too.
And for the first time in years, I realized I wasn’t thinking about Daniel.
I wasn’t thinking about the house he kept.
