She was still on the floor when she heard the key in the front door. Lily had a spare— had insisted on it after a phone call six months ago when Edna hadn’t picked up for two days. It had turned out she’d simply been in the garden with her hearing aid on the kitchen counter.
“Gran?” Lily’s voice came down the hallway ahead of her. Then she rounded the corner and stopped. Then she said, very carefully, “What are you doing on the floor?”
“Thinking,” Edna said with a groan.
Lily dropped her bag and was beside her in a moment—steady, calm, no fuss. She had her mother’s practical hands and her grandfather’s composure in a crisis, which Edna had always considered a very good inheritance. She checked Edna over with quiet efficiency, asked about her hip, about her head, and then gently unwound the rope from her arm the way you might unwrap a scarf from a child. “What is this? It looks hand-woven!” she exclaimed, holding it up. The rope was thick and old, the colour of dried straw, and clearly hadn’t been touched in years.
“I have absolutely no idea. As I said, I was thinking about it,” Edna said, accepting Lily’s hand and rising slowly to her feet. “Along with it was this sealed letter.” She paused, brushing dust from her cardigan. “Put the kettle on. I think we should find out.”
