Frances was my only sister, older than me by three years. We were close as girls, but at our mother’s funeral we had a terrible argument — over something so small I’m ashamed to even name it now — and we both said things you can’t easily unsay.
After that, the silence just… set. A week became a month, a month became a year, and then somehow eighteen years had gone by and neither of us had reached out. Every Christmas I thought about calling. Every birthday. But I was stubborn, and so was she, and stubbornness is a thief that steals decades before you notice.
When word came that Frances had died, alone, of a heart attack, the first thing I felt wasn’t grief. It was panic. Because I realized the phone call I’d been putting off for eighteen years was now one I could never make. The door had closed for good.
There was no one else to handle her things — we’d both outlived everyone. So I drove to the house I hadn’t set foot in for nearly two decades and I began the terrible work of packing up my sister’s whole life into boxes, room by lonely room.
In the back of her bedroom closet, behind her coats, I found an old shoebox. On the lid, in Frances’s unmistakable handwriting, was one word: my name. ‘Ruthie.’ My knees nearly went out from under me. I sat down on her bed and lifted the lid.
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