When I opened the door, Evelyn did not greet me right away.
She looked at my face, then past me toward the sound of cartoons, then back again.
“Oh, Julia,” she said.
And I nearly broke.
Not because she pitied me.
Because she believed me without requiring a trial.
I stepped aside and let her in.
She removed her gloves slowly. “Your mother signed for the notice.”
“I know.”
“Your father read everything.”
“I figured.”
“Brent threatened to sue.”
“That sounds like Brent.”
Evelyn’s mouth twitched, then fell serious. She placed the tin box on my kitchen table.
My breath caught.
I recognized it immediately.
Grandma Rose’s sewing tin.
When I was little, she kept buttons in it. Buttons shaped like flowers, buttons like pearls, tiny brass buttons from coats that had outlived their owners. Whenever my mother was too busy criticizing the way I stood, spoke, ate, breathed, Grandma Rose would let me sort the buttons by color.
