“What’s in there?”

“Buttons, maybe.”

I lifted the lid.

Inside was a hand-embroidered napkin, folded into a square, with a faint brown stain near one corner that I know was peppermint tea because that is the only thing that woman drank between 1990 and the week she died.

I unfolded it across my knee.

The stitching was uneven in the way Margaret’s always was when she worked without her glasses, which was most of the time, because she was vain about them in a way she would have denied.

And in the corner, stitched in dark green thread, was a date.