Grandma’s warning echoed in my head.
Don’t trust anyone who asks what’s on it.
“It’s Grandma talking,” I said.
“About what?”
“Us.”
My cousin went quiet. Then she asked the question she’d really called to ask.
“Did she say anything about the jewelry?”
I rested my hand on top of the cassette.
And suddenly, I understood exactly why Grandma had wanted me to hear it alone.
It wasn’t because the tape held some hidden fortune. It was because what she’d recorded was meant for one person. It was the most private thing she owned, and she’d trusted it to me. The moment I handed it over to be picked apart and searched for something worth money, it would stop being hers and mine.
“No,” I told my cousin.
“Could I hear it anyway? Just to be sure?”
“Grandma left me something private,” I said. “I’m keeping it that way.”
I ended the call.
The next Tuesday, I went to return a book Grandma had borrowed from her bingo friend, Mabel.
Mabel held my hands at her front door. “She talked about you constantly, you know.”
“I used to worry she was lonely,” I admitted.
“Sometimes she was. Everyone is.” Mabel smiled. “But she didn’t spend her days sitting by the phone waiting for you, sweetheart.”
“Really?”
Mabel chuckled. “Once she wore the wrong glasses to bingo and spent the whole night insisting every single card had been printed incorrectly.”
I laughed so hard I had to lean on the doorframe. I could practically hear Grandma arguing with the caller.
That evening, a friend texted to invite me away for the weekend.
Sunday included.
My thumbs started typing the excuse automatically. Sorry, I’ve got family stuff…
Then I thought of Grandma’s little laugh on that tape. My girl has somewhere she wants to be. Good for her.
I deleted the excuse and wrote:
I’d love to come.
Before I left, I asked Mom if I could take a cutting from Grandma’s garden. She helped me pick one of the purple flowers. We still don’t know what they’re called.
When I got home Sunday night, the little plant was waiting on my windowsill. Its soil had gone dry.
I watered it. Not all the water this time. Just enough.
My phone buzzed with another invitation for the following Sunday.
I glanced at the cassette player sitting on my shelf, the gray tape with PENNY on the label still inside.
Then I texted back:
Count me in.
I moved the plant a little closer to the sunlight, and I left the tape right where it was.
My cousins got her pearls, her gold, and her money.
I got the one thing none of them would have known what to do with.
Permission to live.
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