The drive into town took twelve minutes, and I made it with the flour tin belted into the passenger seat beside me like a person.

I want to tell you I spent that drive thinking clearly, but I didn’t.

Mostly I thought about the tape, yellow and brittle, and how many years it must have sat sealed for tape to age like that.

Mama had written read this at the bank, not here long before she died — long enough for the adhesive to go brown at the edges.

She had known, for years, that a day would come when I’d be sitting in her kitchen with this letter, and she had thought ahead even to where I should be standing when I learned the worst of it.