But there was something about stripping down a room that had been kept private for six months that tugged at an old thread in me, and for a moment I was twelve years old again, back in our house in Ohio, standing in front of a door that was always, always shut.

I pushed the memory away.

This was different.

This was Jacqueline, and Jacqueline was nothing on this earth like my mother.

My mother-in-law was a devout, gentle, almost comically considerate woman.

She was the kind of houseguest who organized my pantry spices by color without being asked, who once apologized to me for a solid five minutes because she worried she had used too much dish soap on my good dinner plates, who spent her Sunday mornings at Grace Church and came home to bake something for the neighbors.

She was, in every visible way, the opposite of secretive.