Alicia’s sister caught up with me in the cemetery parking lot just as I was unlocking my car.
I turned around. Maya was half running across the wet gravel in her black dress and black flats, holding something against her chest with both arms. Her face was red and swollen from crying. Her hair had come loose from its clip and was blowing across her mouth in the March wind.
She stopped in front of me, out of breath.
“She asked me to give you this,” she said. “Only after she was gone. She made me promise. She made me swear on our mom’s grave I wouldn’t let you see it before.”
She held it out.
It was a small box. A shoebox, actually. An old one, from a pair of children’s sneakers, the cardboard soft and worn at the corners like it had been opened and closed a thousand times. Somebody had covered it in white wrapping paper and tied it with a piece of gauze bandage instead of ribbon.
My name was written across the lid in Alicia’s handwriting. Purple marker. Big loopy letters with a little smiley face where the dot over the i should have been.
Dr. LUCAS. (Smile. It’s free.)
I took it. My hands were shaking.
“Do you know what’s in it?” I asked Maya.
She shook her head. “She never let me look. She kept it under her bed in the hospital. In the drawer with her socks.” Her chin trembled. “She told me you’d understand.”
I stood there in the parking lot with the cold rain starting to come down and pulled the gauze loose. I lifted the lid. 